I've been rebuilding the Cussler collection that I think has been twice disbanded. The fifty-cent paperback rack in the lobby of the library has been key. Only the Dirk Pitt adventure novels and the NUMA files novels are counted; he and his *ahem* co-authors are getting away from me with the Oregon Files and the Isaac Bell nonsense
The Dirk Pitt Canon:
(X) The Mediterranean Caper
(X) Iceberg
(X) Raise the Titanic!
(X) Vixen 03
(X) Night Probe!
(X) Pacific Vortex (2009! Finally! Also it's freaking terrible)
(X) Deep Six [I'd forgotten I'd read this]
(X) Cyclops [Ditto--though it involves a shootout on the moon!]
(X) Treasure
(X) Dragon
(X) Sahara
(X) Inca Gold
(X) Shock Wave
(X) Flood Tide
(X) Atlantis Found
(X) Valhalla Rising
(X) Trojan Odyssey
(X) Black Wind
(X) Treasure of Khan [Sure the Mongols stashed a bunch of stuff in Hawaii!]
( ) Arctic Drift
Kurt Austin adventures (with Paul Kemprecos)
(X) Serpent
( ) Blue Gold
(X) Fire Ice
( ) White Death
(X) Lost City [dastardly French arms magnates? Haven't we seen this before in Africa?]
(X) Polar Shift [Magnetic Polar Shift. Awesome]
( ) The Navigator
( ) Medusa
Maybe I've read Blue Gold or White Death? The other three have come out since I did this the last time, and everyone should know I'm not paying anywhere near full price for these babies.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
A fragment
Getting to the Faculty of Art from the dormitory by tram is a little complicated. A few clarifications: I am (technically) a trained linguist (degree and all, I’m afraid) and, as I assume most people to be, somewhat obsessive-compulsive about particular things. Therefore, the perceptive reader (read: not blind) will be forewarned of the three following themes: (1) My exceeding height. (2) My love/lust for etymology, the compulsion I have to examine words for meaningful components. (3) In spite of (1) and fueled by (2), my love of the tram network of DPMB (Dopravní podnik města Brna, the Brno municipal transportation authority).
Sure, it’s relatively easy, even at seven-thirty in the morning, with a few hours of sleep under your belt, to make your way down to the nearest No.1 stop. This is Výstaviště, the Exhibition Center, though “center” is perhaps not the best rendering. The word itself is immediately from výstava “exhibition,” and the suffix –iště “place, location.” Výstava is from the root /stav/, an old suffixed causative of the verb /sta/ “to stand”, prefixed with vy- “outwards/up,” with the prefix vowel lengthening in nominalization, a process I believe is peculiar to Czech and Slovak in the Slavic languages. The amusing thing (well, amusing to me) is that the suffix - iště is also originally a derivative of the verbal root /sta/, cognate to the Indo-Iranian suffix –stān “place of.” So, the whole thing is the set-up place, the made-to-stānd-up-place-of-standing, or, to torture the metaphor, the Upbuiltistān of southwest Brno.
“Exhibition Center” it is then.
However, that line one stop, with its eminently mineable name, is but the first step and the first tram line, unless you want to stay on the one and go to the main station or all the way to the other end of town and its hinted-at suburbs, in this case, Řečkovice. Even four, five, six months in, the end-points of any given line remain nebulous, hypothetical, existing only in electronic letters, and, more prosaically, on placards and maps. A single stop in the direction of Řečkovice gets us to Mendlovo náměstí ([Monk/geneticist Johan Gregor] Mendel Square.) Note the fairly common placename náměstí “square”—a long-i neuter noun originally from the prepositional phrase na městě “in the city” (there’s some funny initial vowel lengthening again) and also note the Czech possessive adjective suffix –ovo (neuter). At Mendlovo, Mendlák in the slang of the town, you must exit the one, cross the street, and pick up a five, six, or seven heading north and east, conjoined for the upcoming stretch of track. The three stops here: Nemocnice u Svaté Anny, (the hospital at/by St. Anne) Šilingrovo náměstí (should be parsable as Šilingr Square) and then down a street that used to be the walls around the old town to Česká (Czech [street]), the transport hub at the north end of the city center.
From there, off the second tram line of the day, it’s about a three-block walk, if you remember where we were going in the first place, but the lazy step is to transfer one more time to the twelve or thirteen, up one step to Grohova (ulice “street” is implied, which is feminine, hence the feminine ending –ova); Groh Street. From there the faculty of Art is half a block away, and you can stagger to class, if you bothered going in the first place.
______
This is from a handwritten fragment from the winter of 2004-2005, probably written in my dorm room in Vinařská or at the Yellow Bar. It brought back some associations, although this whole process was already becoming obsolete when I started walking up the hill, not down, and either walking the whole way or just taking the bus (the 20? 21?) the back way. I've made some minor emendations, including the last sentence, which was an attempt to give a bit of closure to the whole thing. Its incompleteness aside, I thought I'd rescue it from its spot folded up inside some Slavic book on my shelf and see if it triggered anyone else's associations.
Sure, it’s relatively easy, even at seven-thirty in the morning, with a few hours of sleep under your belt, to make your way down to the nearest No.1 stop. This is Výstaviště, the Exhibition Center, though “center” is perhaps not the best rendering. The word itself is immediately from výstava “exhibition,” and the suffix –iště “place, location.” Výstava is from the root /stav/, an old suffixed causative of the verb /sta/ “to stand”, prefixed with vy- “outwards/up,” with the prefix vowel lengthening in nominalization, a process I believe is peculiar to Czech and Slovak in the Slavic languages. The amusing thing (well, amusing to me) is that the suffix - iště is also originally a derivative of the verbal root /sta/, cognate to the Indo-Iranian suffix –stān “place of.” So, the whole thing is the set-up place, the made-to-stānd-up-place-of-standing, or, to torture the metaphor, the Upbuiltistān of southwest Brno.
“Exhibition Center” it is then.
However, that line one stop, with its eminently mineable name, is but the first step and the first tram line, unless you want to stay on the one and go to the main station or all the way to the other end of town and its hinted-at suburbs, in this case, Řečkovice. Even four, five, six months in, the end-points of any given line remain nebulous, hypothetical, existing only in electronic letters, and, more prosaically, on placards and maps. A single stop in the direction of Řečkovice gets us to Mendlovo náměstí ([Monk/geneticist Johan Gregor] Mendel Square.) Note the fairly common placename náměstí “square”—a long-i neuter noun originally from the prepositional phrase na městě “in the city” (there’s some funny initial vowel lengthening again) and also note the Czech possessive adjective suffix –ovo (neuter). At Mendlovo, Mendlák in the slang of the town, you must exit the one, cross the street, and pick up a five, six, or seven heading north and east, conjoined for the upcoming stretch of track. The three stops here: Nemocnice u Svaté Anny, (the hospital at/by St. Anne) Šilingrovo náměstí (should be parsable as Šilingr Square) and then down a street that used to be the walls around the old town to Česká (Czech [street]), the transport hub at the north end of the city center.
From there, off the second tram line of the day, it’s about a three-block walk, if you remember where we were going in the first place, but the lazy step is to transfer one more time to the twelve or thirteen, up one step to Grohova (ulice “street” is implied, which is feminine, hence the feminine ending –ova); Groh Street. From there the faculty of Art is half a block away, and you can stagger to class, if you bothered going in the first place.
______
This is from a handwritten fragment from the winter of 2004-2005, probably written in my dorm room in Vinařská or at the Yellow Bar. It brought back some associations, although this whole process was already becoming obsolete when I started walking up the hill, not down, and either walking the whole way or just taking the bus (the 20? 21?) the back way. I've made some minor emendations, including the last sentence, which was an attempt to give a bit of closure to the whole thing. Its incompleteness aside, I thought I'd rescue it from its spot folded up inside some Slavic book on my shelf and see if it triggered anyone else's associations.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
A Few Droplets
If it has been raining so much and continues to do so, I will add a few droplets to it. Besides, that might make it stop; if it only lasts five minutes I’ll set my writing down and go for a walk.
I noticed years ago that during all the larger storms they always announce a disturbance or depression over Iceland. Beautiful weather has something to do with the Canary Islands, from where “regions of high pressure” trundle along as a rule, but rain and sleet and cold always come from Iceland; it is clearly the specialty there. No one ever announces a depression over Kardašova Řečice in Southern Bohemia or a region of low pressure over the district offices in Trutnov; it just goes to show you that even after the handover of power we remain dependent on foreigners, at least so far as the weather is concerned. As for Iceland, it must be a strange place, for (according to Otto’s Encyclopedia1) it is a land with “a coarse, cold, and damp climate,” but also a “comparatively mild” one; they suffer from tapeworms and asthma and in the past they banned love poetry by law2 which seems sensible enough; their main industries are sheep, fish, volcanic eruptions and rain.
Of course it just started raining again.
This year the harvest will be bad on account of the terrible rain; otherwise it would be bad on account of the prolonged drought. But prolonged drought is better for the farmers, because then we suffer from “catastrophic climactic threats” and especially “hail the size of pigeons’ eggs,” (the size of pigeons’ eggs only being referenced in this context) whose result is the forbearance of certain taxes and “speedy relief from the responsible agencies.” We didn’t hear anything this year about the size of pigeons’ eggs on account of all the bad weather; repeat it a hundred times and you will feel the sweltering heat, the piercing sun, the oppressive humidity of an incoming storm. The farmer carefully looks up at the sky, the chickens already having hidden themselves, and sees the booming heavens, the downpour beginning to splash and spray, and suddenly “hail the size of pigeons’ eggs” will ring down. But that has simply failed to happen this year.
Besides, the sun just came out once more. I’m going outside for a bit.
The summer solstice is a time when children from country schools take excursions to Prague. I met at least a dozen such excursions today at the very minimum. The children are all holding hands and not even looking to the right or to the left, as they have a horrible fear of getting lost; getting them across the street, for instance, is a very tricky maneuver indeed. These little country moppets are quite agitated, and the children do not let go of each others’ hands even at night (for the world is an evil place), and I haven’t even mentioned the country trousers yet; neither long or short, but the famous “trousers you’ll grow out of,” and the little girls pattering around like mice with supernaturally large umbrellas, and the teacher bringing up the rear with an umbrella and his overcoat over his arm, counting his charges at every corner. It is a wonder one female teacher did not burst into tears when she sat her group down in pairs by the National Theater and suddenly realized she had three girls too many. How it happened and what she did with them I have no idea. But nothing is more touching than when it is raining quite steadily and the bridge looks like it has been swept clean of people, and one of those children's crusades is straggling along it with soaked hair and dripping umbrellas and numb hands, just to see “the great city, whose fame…”
God, it’s started raining again!
"And the Lord sent rain down onto the earth. It rained unceasingly for six moths. The waters rose and inundated the earth forty cubits above the highest summits." That is the description of the flood in a variation of the Bible from Turkestan. The prophet Noah also built an ark in this version; but when all the animals were going on board in pairs, the devil caught the ass by the tail and held him. The ass stomped and brayed and would not go on. "Come on, come on, you devil," the prophet shouted at him. At that the devil dropped the ass' tail and dashed for the ark. "Wait," said the prophet, "who called you?" "You did," the devil replied. "You just said 'come on, come on, you devil,' and that is me, after all!" So Noah had to let the devil on the ark, and that's how the devil escaped the flood. Now you know why the flood--in light of the devilishness of the world--was completely unnecessary.
There is a relevant detail to this story which the Bible has left out: that it really smelled in the ark, on account of all the filth from the animals. That angle on things surprised me and utterly convinced me. Noah even prayed to God about it. But the Allah of Turkestan, instead of creating the broom or the shovel, created the dung-beetle instead, which removed all of the filth in question. Since then God has left it among us, to get rid of the mud and all kinds of unclean things.
It rains no more. I'm going out.
1923
______
1 [Otto's Encyclopedia was the largest Czech-language encylopedia. Of course Čapek had access to a copy; I'm sure it was his Google/Wikipedia.]
2 According to this site, the Gray Goose Laws forbade, among other types, "poems praising a woman." In an era more conducive to blood feuds and blood money, I suppose this made sense. However, it also says such laws were frequently ignored, which also makes sense.]
*
I noticed years ago that during all the larger storms they always announce a disturbance or depression over Iceland. Beautiful weather has something to do with the Canary Islands, from where “regions of high pressure” trundle along as a rule, but rain and sleet and cold always come from Iceland; it is clearly the specialty there. No one ever announces a depression over Kardašova Řečice in Southern Bohemia or a region of low pressure over the district offices in Trutnov; it just goes to show you that even after the handover of power we remain dependent on foreigners, at least so far as the weather is concerned. As for Iceland, it must be a strange place, for (according to Otto’s Encyclopedia1) it is a land with “a coarse, cold, and damp climate,” but also a “comparatively mild” one; they suffer from tapeworms and asthma and in the past they banned love poetry by law2 which seems sensible enough; their main industries are sheep, fish, volcanic eruptions and rain.
Of course it just started raining again.
*
This year the harvest will be bad on account of the terrible rain; otherwise it would be bad on account of the prolonged drought. But prolonged drought is better for the farmers, because then we suffer from “catastrophic climactic threats” and especially “hail the size of pigeons’ eggs,” (the size of pigeons’ eggs only being referenced in this context) whose result is the forbearance of certain taxes and “speedy relief from the responsible agencies.” We didn’t hear anything this year about the size of pigeons’ eggs on account of all the bad weather; repeat it a hundred times and you will feel the sweltering heat, the piercing sun, the oppressive humidity of an incoming storm. The farmer carefully looks up at the sky, the chickens already having hidden themselves, and sees the booming heavens, the downpour beginning to splash and spray, and suddenly “hail the size of pigeons’ eggs” will ring down. But that has simply failed to happen this year.
Besides, the sun just came out once more. I’m going outside for a bit.
*
The summer solstice is a time when children from country schools take excursions to Prague. I met at least a dozen such excursions today at the very minimum. The children are all holding hands and not even looking to the right or to the left, as they have a horrible fear of getting lost; getting them across the street, for instance, is a very tricky maneuver indeed. These little country moppets are quite agitated, and the children do not let go of each others’ hands even at night (for the world is an evil place), and I haven’t even mentioned the country trousers yet; neither long or short, but the famous “trousers you’ll grow out of,” and the little girls pattering around like mice with supernaturally large umbrellas, and the teacher bringing up the rear with an umbrella and his overcoat over his arm, counting his charges at every corner. It is a wonder one female teacher did not burst into tears when she sat her group down in pairs by the National Theater and suddenly realized she had three girls too many. How it happened and what she did with them I have no idea. But nothing is more touching than when it is raining quite steadily and the bridge looks like it has been swept clean of people, and one of those children's crusades is straggling along it with soaked hair and dripping umbrellas and numb hands, just to see “the great city, whose fame…”
God, it’s started raining again!
*
"And the Lord sent rain down onto the earth. It rained unceasingly for six moths. The waters rose and inundated the earth forty cubits above the highest summits." That is the description of the flood in a variation of the Bible from Turkestan. The prophet Noah also built an ark in this version; but when all the animals were going on board in pairs, the devil caught the ass by the tail and held him. The ass stomped and brayed and would not go on. "Come on, come on, you devil," the prophet shouted at him. At that the devil dropped the ass' tail and dashed for the ark. "Wait," said the prophet, "who called you?" "You did," the devil replied. "You just said 'come on, come on, you devil,' and that is me, after all!" So Noah had to let the devil on the ark, and that's how the devil escaped the flood. Now you know why the flood--in light of the devilishness of the world--was completely unnecessary.
There is a relevant detail to this story which the Bible has left out: that it really smelled in the ark, on account of all the filth from the animals. That angle on things surprised me and utterly convinced me. Noah even prayed to God about it. But the Allah of Turkestan, instead of creating the broom or the shovel, created the dung-beetle instead, which removed all of the filth in question. Since then God has left it among us, to get rid of the mud and all kinds of unclean things.
It rains no more. I'm going out.
1923
______
1 [Otto's Encyclopedia was the largest Czech-language encylopedia. Of course Čapek had access to a copy; I'm sure it was his Google/Wikipedia.]
2 According to this site, the Gray Goose Laws forbade, among other types, "poems praising a woman." In an era more conducive to blood feuds and blood money, I suppose this made sense. However, it also says such laws were frequently ignored, which also makes sense.]
Monday, August 17, 2009
Housekeeping
I managed to post "Sunday" on a Monday, and I managed to post Pentecostal only two and a half months after actual Pentecost. (May 31st). Whoops; this is a little delayed, isn't it? I hope this isn't one of those projects that fall through the cracks; I seem to have a lot of those.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Pentecostal
When I, a heedless child, was instructed in the highest secrets of the faith—namely the Holy Trinity—by Mr. Bret the catechist1, it was not at all strange to me that there were three personages of God; for me there I simply recognized three gods in heaven the way I recognized three gods on earth—the notary public, my father, and the chairman of the parish council, having chosen those three among other the others for their physical size. It was something else that bothered me: what exactly did the Holy Spirit do and what was its purpose? The business of God the Father was clear to me—the creation of the world is a tangible work, after all. God the Son was at least a man, and had once been a child, and I could color his clothes with the most beautiful red and blue colors in the Bible stories I had. I just didn’t know what to do with the Holy Spirit; I didn’t know what he looked like and I couldn’t define exactly what his function was; he seemed to me a little undervalued and occupied by internal affairs, without a defined and practical sphere of action. I maintain that everyone had the same problems with the Holy Ghost.
Since that time I have not made much progress in matters of religious expertise, having instead been forced to turn to more humanistic concerns, and it is still a question of spirit which makes my head spin. For even we people know full well how to value material work and control over matter; we know how to love out hate human leaders, saviors, and the shapers of the church; but our stance on the mere soul which does not do this or that is uncertain, diffident. The human spirit concern our very faith in humanity, but does not have a defined sphere within it; we regard intelligence or education as some sort of honor or adornment, but not as a worthy goal or sense of living. Not long ago a survey of pedagogues resulted in a distaste for impractical education, which supposedly was poor preparation for a useful life. Yes, the spirit, which does not serve strictly practical needs, seems somehow useless and poorly regulated; we esteem it but we do not know what to do with it. It is the same with the Holy Spirit; it rules nowhere, but makes everywhere sacred. It cannot be measured by the results of its work; its sphere is everywhere.
For that reason we should celebrate the human spirit at this year’s holidays, that tongue of flame and universal language; the spirit, which did not create this world and does not lead it, but sanctifies it; a spirit wholly impractical and unfettered, useless, unregulated by defined limits. It is difficult to define the function of the spirit, of education, of culture; we know that we cannot find it and we cannot sow a field or grease a wheel with it. It may be more personally valuable for us to recognize it in the actions of the law than in music; it will clearly be more fruitful to manufacture nails than read verses, and it is certainly more useful to cultivate turnips than to cultivate atomic theory. Culture is indefensible on practical terms, but that was the case millennia ago, when people composed useless music, verses and paintings and enumerated the stars and wasted their time in hundreds of similar ways, as we do today. Education too is indefensible except by saying that whoever that exciting tongue of flame descends upon recognizes through some secret fashion that it is all worth it, that it is worth more than any sort of useful or profitably or popularly-regarded deed. In its ultimate sense the spirit serves nothing else at all besides humanity; it does not exist for any other reason.It does not nourish anyone, or lead anyone anywhere, but it grants one thing: a life of value.
1929
______
1 Mr. Bret the catechist--teacher of religion and friend of the Čapek family in Úpice, who is also mentioned by [Karel's brother] Josef Čapek in his autobiographical writings and by [their sister] Helena Čapková in her autobiographical work Malé děvče [Young Girl].
Since that time I have not made much progress in matters of religious expertise, having instead been forced to turn to more humanistic concerns, and it is still a question of spirit which makes my head spin. For even we people know full well how to value material work and control over matter; we know how to love out hate human leaders, saviors, and the shapers of the church; but our stance on the mere soul which does not do this or that is uncertain, diffident. The human spirit concern our very faith in humanity, but does not have a defined sphere within it; we regard intelligence or education as some sort of honor or adornment, but not as a worthy goal or sense of living. Not long ago a survey of pedagogues resulted in a distaste for impractical education, which supposedly was poor preparation for a useful life. Yes, the spirit, which does not serve strictly practical needs, seems somehow useless and poorly regulated; we esteem it but we do not know what to do with it. It is the same with the Holy Spirit; it rules nowhere, but makes everywhere sacred. It cannot be measured by the results of its work; its sphere is everywhere.
For that reason we should celebrate the human spirit at this year’s holidays, that tongue of flame and universal language; the spirit, which did not create this world and does not lead it, but sanctifies it; a spirit wholly impractical and unfettered, useless, unregulated by defined limits. It is difficult to define the function of the spirit, of education, of culture; we know that we cannot find it and we cannot sow a field or grease a wheel with it. It may be more personally valuable for us to recognize it in the actions of the law than in music; it will clearly be more fruitful to manufacture nails than read verses, and it is certainly more useful to cultivate turnips than to cultivate atomic theory. Culture is indefensible on practical terms, but that was the case millennia ago, when people composed useless music, verses and paintings and enumerated the stars and wasted their time in hundreds of similar ways, as we do today. Education too is indefensible except by saying that whoever that exciting tongue of flame descends upon recognizes through some secret fashion that it is all worth it, that it is worth more than any sort of useful or profitably or popularly-regarded deed. In its ultimate sense the spirit serves nothing else at all besides humanity; it does not exist for any other reason.It does not nourish anyone, or lead anyone anywhere, but it grants one thing: a life of value.
1929
______
1 Mr. Bret the catechist--teacher of religion and friend of the Čapek family in Úpice, who is also mentioned by [Karel's brother] Josef Čapek in his autobiographical writings and by [their sister] Helena Čapková in her autobiographical work Malé děvče [Young Girl].
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Sunday
I don’t know whether it is an atmospheric effect or an acoustic one or something else, but the fact of the matter is, that (though I never know what the day is or the date, usually figuring this out from the masthead of the newspaper) on Sunday mornings I usually feel some special pressure right when I wake up, a disinclination to rise, an overall weakness of will and a simple insufficiency of enthusiasm for any task or type of work; you could also call it indolence, sloth, spleen, or just plain boredom. Normally I am vexed by confusion about this sudden depression for a little while until I finally say: “Oh, it’s probably Sunday.” And it always is.
So, as I have said, I do not know where it comes from, maybe it is some atmospheric pressure or magnetic disturbance or something. It is possible that something in the universe just does not work on Sundays, by which the daily order of things is disrupted. It ought to be scientifically ascertained if the trees or grass grow on Sundays, or to test if it is an empirical fact that it rains more on the red days on the calendar or is hotter than usual; if spiritual activity is dampened, if the dogs stink particularly badly and the children are more vexing, to see if it is always windier outside, if more people drown, if there are a larger number of automobile accidents, actors performing worse, the trains and trams run badly, problems with digestion and beer and handwriting are worse than at any other time. It is possible that there are periodic cosmic interruptions on Sundays and holidays and that one wakes up on Sunday with a tangible foreboding that something is not in order. There is the hidden trouble.
Or perhaps it is an acoustic phenomenon; one awakens and does not hear the vast and wide hum of human endeavor; the result of which is that something seems lacking. Is is as unnerving as a mill that ceases to turn. That explanation is a simple one and consequently it cannot be correct, for I wake up with a catastrophic feeling on Sundays in completely foreign cities, even alone in the mountains, and if a storm cast me on a deserted island without so much as a Friday I would still wake up one morning with a terrifying feeling that something was not in order and that I didn’t feel like doing a thing. “Aha,” I would finally say, “it’s probably Sunday.” And indeed it would be.
I maintain that weekends, excursions, and all human holidays are just desperate attempts at flight from this Sunday depression; people think they have to fatigue themselves to forget the crushing burden of holidays. Woe to them; for Sundays find them at the feet of St. Jan’s, in Divoká Šárka4 and at the stadium of Sparta. Better served is he who confronts the streets of his town face to face or passes his Sunday at home, lounging around as though he has the flu. Well then, in cities people show that it is possible to bear Sunday afternoons after a fashion—actually, there is almost something exalted about it, for the girls are prettier and on top of that you get to read the Sunday papers. Well into the afternoon a true Sunday state blooms, as the city shrugs off its somnolence and people come into the street whom you never see at any other time. There are thousands of people who only exist on Sundays; old women, widows, orphans, mustachioed men, uncles and aunts, nuns and grandmothers, strange people who look like they were put away in the wardrobe thirty years ago and let out on Sundays so that the moths do not eat them. They have strange, washed Sunday faces; pale, long-nosed, whiskered, ginger-haired, freckled, and doughy, dressed somewhat poorly, as a rule, but the clothes are clean; there is something old-fashioned about each of them, even anachronistic; other than on Sundays, you only meet these people and these sorts of clothes at a third-rate funeral. Towards about four or five o’clock you meet whole families who only exist in public on Sundays; on normal days you meet families with unpleasant little boys screaming at every step, with little girls peeping out from the edge of their mother’s skirts, with a mother swaying like a ship, and with a father smoking a cigar in a holder and criticizing the state of the roads and the construction. I swear to you that this is human nature on Sundays, which is exactly the same in Rome, Paris, or London, and which returns the whole world to an indestructible and horrible thing: into a small town. The town dweller does not flee from the city and its uproar, or the small town and its boredom, its slow pace and its slothful disorder. This suppressed small town, hidden during the week in shops and work floors and houses has Sundays and holidays to itself to dominate the streets; these aren’t walks, these are a manifestation. We are here. We, the old maids, the fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts. We the anachronistic. We the eternal.
1927
______
1 [Svatojanské proudy (St. Jan/John's rapids/streams) no longer exist, having been dammed downstream and turned into a reservoir. Pictures survive, of course. Divoká Šárka is a large park and nature preserve in the northern outskirts of Prague.]
So, as I have said, I do not know where it comes from, maybe it is some atmospheric pressure or magnetic disturbance or something. It is possible that something in the universe just does not work on Sundays, by which the daily order of things is disrupted. It ought to be scientifically ascertained if the trees or grass grow on Sundays, or to test if it is an empirical fact that it rains more on the red days on the calendar or is hotter than usual; if spiritual activity is dampened, if the dogs stink particularly badly and the children are more vexing, to see if it is always windier outside, if more people drown, if there are a larger number of automobile accidents, actors performing worse, the trains and trams run badly, problems with digestion and beer and handwriting are worse than at any other time. It is possible that there are periodic cosmic interruptions on Sundays and holidays and that one wakes up on Sunday with a tangible foreboding that something is not in order. There is the hidden trouble.
Or perhaps it is an acoustic phenomenon; one awakens and does not hear the vast and wide hum of human endeavor; the result of which is that something seems lacking. Is is as unnerving as a mill that ceases to turn. That explanation is a simple one and consequently it cannot be correct, for I wake up with a catastrophic feeling on Sundays in completely foreign cities, even alone in the mountains, and if a storm cast me on a deserted island without so much as a Friday I would still wake up one morning with a terrifying feeling that something was not in order and that I didn’t feel like doing a thing. “Aha,” I would finally say, “it’s probably Sunday.” And indeed it would be.
I maintain that weekends, excursions, and all human holidays are just desperate attempts at flight from this Sunday depression; people think they have to fatigue themselves to forget the crushing burden of holidays. Woe to them; for Sundays find them at the feet of St. Jan’s, in Divoká Šárka4 and at the stadium of Sparta. Better served is he who confronts the streets of his town face to face or passes his Sunday at home, lounging around as though he has the flu. Well then, in cities people show that it is possible to bear Sunday afternoons after a fashion—actually, there is almost something exalted about it, for the girls are prettier and on top of that you get to read the Sunday papers. Well into the afternoon a true Sunday state blooms, as the city shrugs off its somnolence and people come into the street whom you never see at any other time. There are thousands of people who only exist on Sundays; old women, widows, orphans, mustachioed men, uncles and aunts, nuns and grandmothers, strange people who look like they were put away in the wardrobe thirty years ago and let out on Sundays so that the moths do not eat them. They have strange, washed Sunday faces; pale, long-nosed, whiskered, ginger-haired, freckled, and doughy, dressed somewhat poorly, as a rule, but the clothes are clean; there is something old-fashioned about each of them, even anachronistic; other than on Sundays, you only meet these people and these sorts of clothes at a third-rate funeral. Towards about four or five o’clock you meet whole families who only exist in public on Sundays; on normal days you meet families with unpleasant little boys screaming at every step, with little girls peeping out from the edge of their mother’s skirts, with a mother swaying like a ship, and with a father smoking a cigar in a holder and criticizing the state of the roads and the construction. I swear to you that this is human nature on Sundays, which is exactly the same in Rome, Paris, or London, and which returns the whole world to an indestructible and horrible thing: into a small town. The town dweller does not flee from the city and its uproar, or the small town and its boredom, its slow pace and its slothful disorder. This suppressed small town, hidden during the week in shops and work floors and houses has Sundays and holidays to itself to dominate the streets; these aren’t walks, these are a manifestation. We are here. We, the old maids, the fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts. We the anachronistic. We the eternal.
1927
______
1 [Svatojanské proudy (St. Jan/John's rapids/streams) no longer exist, having been dammed downstream and turned into a reservoir. Pictures survive, of course. Divoká Šárka is a large park and nature preserve in the northern outskirts of Prague.]
Monday, August 03, 2009
Uproar At The Edge Of Town
It changes endlessly, and that is the truth; sometimes it glistens in the rain or almost rings under the sun; sometimes there is frost or fog or snow and sometimes there are the most strange and beautiful clouds overhead that it is almost unbelievable; but all in all they are still the same roofs and chimneys (and the occasional chimney sweep) with the same windows, with servants (sometimes different ones) shaking dustcloths out the windows, and the same yards and the neighbors’ children—in short, these are just the sort of things you can see out of any window. It is probably the same for you.
And in addition to these daily sights there is another view, an auditory one, if I might put it that way. The same sounds come in the window every day; you scarcely note them as they happen, but you know that if they did not come at their appointed time that you would notice something lacking and begin to listen intently. This is why Sundays and holidays are somehow oppressive, because that daily aural backdrop is different; suppressed and thinned out. The world is not so full or so real on those days. How could you not recognize the sounds of your part of town? I know them so well I know nothing of them as they happen. Hammer away, carpenters, shaping the timbers of a new row of houses, you are no bother; rattle on, coal carts, roar and shout, heavy motors straining up hill; and you, airplane, droning overhead—it does not touch me. What sort of new and unaccustomed sound would there have to be to summon me to the window? The bugle and bass of country musicians would do that; I’d jump up and go look and the old man blowing into his horn. Or the sounds of cows and heifers and the high-pitched calves, that beautiful, husky, the thirds and fifths of the mountain pastures. Or a song for seven singers. In any of those events I would leap up from my work and tear over to the window to see where—where—
Suddenly I hear a boom. It is ten-twenty in the morning. So what does that boom imply? Maybe the soldiers are drilling down in the fields; perhaps it is a mortar or a detonation, as they call it, but the soldiers nearby have already finished drilling and are headed home singing, “oh, you will regret, you will regret this, my love.” Well, it could be the trams clanking, or the boards pounding over at the construction site; perhaps they have torn down some scaffolding. A number of loud noises have already fallen into this beloved daily din at the edge of town. Whooo, whooo, wheezes the powerful locomotive; and hear the iron squeal on the bumpers. And that freight truck tries to brake as it hurtles noisily downhill. “Hey, hey,” the coachmen might shout, “why did they load on so much?” And I know that other sound, that is the children whistling as they go to school. The barking of a puppy. The clanking of a steamroller. The sonorous clacking of bricklayers laying. I don’t have to get up from my work; repetition has already brought these sounds here into my space, and so much the better, for they are so extensive and vibrant.
At ten-twenty there was a gas explosion in an apartment a few blocks away. It was a proper boom, but before I could evaluate it, is disappeared into this living, bustling, crashing polyphony at the edge of town as though it belonged there, as if it had already been written down beforehand in the sheet music.
Boom. One strike of the drum to keep the beat.
1931
______
And in addition to these daily sights there is another view, an auditory one, if I might put it that way. The same sounds come in the window every day; you scarcely note them as they happen, but you know that if they did not come at their appointed time that you would notice something lacking and begin to listen intently. This is why Sundays and holidays are somehow oppressive, because that daily aural backdrop is different; suppressed and thinned out. The world is not so full or so real on those days. How could you not recognize the sounds of your part of town? I know them so well I know nothing of them as they happen. Hammer away, carpenters, shaping the timbers of a new row of houses, you are no bother; rattle on, coal carts, roar and shout, heavy motors straining up hill; and you, airplane, droning overhead—it does not touch me. What sort of new and unaccustomed sound would there have to be to summon me to the window? The bugle and bass of country musicians would do that; I’d jump up and go look and the old man blowing into his horn. Or the sounds of cows and heifers and the high-pitched calves, that beautiful, husky, the thirds and fifths of the mountain pastures. Or a song for seven singers. In any of those events I would leap up from my work and tear over to the window to see where—where—
Suddenly I hear a boom. It is ten-twenty in the morning. So what does that boom imply? Maybe the soldiers are drilling down in the fields; perhaps it is a mortar or a detonation, as they call it, but the soldiers nearby have already finished drilling and are headed home singing, “oh, you will regret, you will regret this, my love.” Well, it could be the trams clanking, or the boards pounding over at the construction site; perhaps they have torn down some scaffolding. A number of loud noises have already fallen into this beloved daily din at the edge of town. Whooo, whooo, wheezes the powerful locomotive; and hear the iron squeal on the bumpers. And that freight truck tries to brake as it hurtles noisily downhill. “Hey, hey,” the coachmen might shout, “why did they load on so much?” And I know that other sound, that is the children whistling as they go to school. The barking of a puppy. The clanking of a steamroller. The sonorous clacking of bricklayers laying. I don’t have to get up from my work; repetition has already brought these sounds here into my space, and so much the better, for they are so extensive and vibrant.
At ten-twenty there was a gas explosion in an apartment a few blocks away. It was a proper boom, but before I could evaluate it, is disappeared into this living, bustling, crashing polyphony at the edge of town as though it belonged there, as if it had already been written down beforehand in the sheet music.
Boom. One strike of the drum to keep the beat.
1931
______
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Confindence and nativizing
An interesting article in its own right, but most striking for me for its first line.
That continuum of confidence, of retaining the foreign or arrogantly nativizing it, pretty much sums up large chunks of my life.
(via languagehat)
Čapek seems to be on hiatus until further notice. I've got other fires to tend.
That continuum of confidence, of retaining the foreign or arrogantly nativizing it, pretty much sums up large chunks of my life.
(via languagehat)
Čapek seems to be on hiatus until further notice. I've got other fires to tend.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Friday, May 08, 2009
Friday, May 01, 2009
Beyond The City
I say this from my own experience: the city is a bad place, unhealthy and entirely injurious to humanity. I do not even mean the dust, smoke, bad air and other horrible dangers to both health and morals that lie in wait for the man on the street. I mean the unhealthy and truly terrifying fact that the city-dweller cannot ordinarily see the moon and the stars. The true autochthon of the center of town cannot see the Big Dipper or Polaris on account of the streetlights; and because of the buildings no one knows whether the full or new moon is shining; even if they did know, to them it would be six of one and a half-dozen of the other.
Big Dipper, Vermont, June 2006
As far as the stars are concerned, their astral and planetary influence on human destiny is strongly in doubt, and as far as the influence of the moon is concerned, educated people only recognize its important to the extent of the tides, the palolo worm,1 the growth of certain plants and bacteria, and perhaps also on sleepwalkers, poets, lovers and cats. I, however, am not concerning myself with these effects; I am concerned with the fact that if a denizen of the streets lifts his eyes from the ground, he cannot see the twinkling of the stars in the sky, and cannot see the face of the moon. If goes out on the threshold of his building, he does not even meet his nearest neighbors Venus or Jupiter. He is not permitted to direct his steps by the moon. He doesn’t even know if the night sky is black or white. He lives in a starless cavern like an olm,2 but he does not realize it. The olm probably does not realize it either.
The man on the streets lives in the city, and sometimes in a very large one, but he does not live in the universe, for he does not live under the stars. He lives among a million people, but not among a million stars. His world ends in Vysočany or Bubeneč3 instead of ending at Arcturus or the Milky Way; it’s really quite a small little world, for it does not go on into infinity. It doesn’t even matter if you study the star charts or can differentiate Altair from Albireo;4 it is more important to just be able to convince yourself whenever you want that the stars are still up there and that the cosmos exists. The man on the street has to go all the way out to Zbraslav5 to spot the universe; but the man at the periphery is in the universe as soon as he stands at his own door and looks up. If people met at night under the stars instead of under lamps, I think that they would not be easily able to talk about politics or the terrible state of things; it’s easier to talk of love, of the next day, and of other quiet and serious things under the stars. Under the stars you can go crazy or fall in love, but you can’t get really aggravated. Secret astral influences do exist; the stars have a powerful influence on a person who looks at them, but they have no influence on someone who reads the glowing advertisements for the Lyon Works6or reads theater reviews at lunch. A man under the stars is a participant in the grandiose glory of the world; he is crowned by those stars themselves.
The effect of the moon is more profound. I don’t even mean the splendor of the moonlit night, the supernatural beauty of the Ottoman crescent, or the silver palaces on the moon7; I have the lunar phases and quarters in mind. A man who lives in the street conducts himself by the calendar; he knows it is the first or the fifteenth or the seventeenth, by which he is fatigued by everything brought to him by the merry-go-round of time. His time is not sacredly and lightly inscribed in the phases of the moon. His life is not divided into heavenly quarters, and does not consist of light and dark periods. When he pays his rent on the first it is no eternal recurrence of time as it is when the moon is full. The time between two full moons is more profound and solemn than the time which comes between the first and the last. Time for a man of the city is a mere date, is it just a number and in no way a heavenly phenomenon; it does not come from eternity, which is the time of the universe. A man who sees the face of the moon lives not by the ticking clock on the wall, but by the secretive timepieces of the planets; consequently he measures time, by very long feet, if I may say so.8
The last time I moved I intended to move alone to a wild and abandoned part of the city, but instead I found that I had moved much farther away: out to the moon and to the vicinity of the stars.
1926
______
1 ["The worm lives in the shallow waters in the coral reefs. During its main breeding season , which occurs on the second or third day after the third quarter of the moon in October or November, the worms produce segments which are engorged with sperm or eggs . These segments break off at sunrise, rise to the surface, and release their gametes into the sea . The local villagers and fishermen collect these segments in large quantities as it is a popular delicacy. The gelatinous mass of worms is baked or fried and then eaten." (courtesy here. Mmmm. "Mblalolo" in the original, which is fascinating to me, as it does not seem like a permissible syllable onset a Malayo-Polynesian language. [EDIT: Fijian has a prenasalized "mb" permissible as an onset; not sure about the "l," though.]
2 [The olm. Sure, I could have said "salamander, but it's actually a close translation, and of course, I love little words I rarely see used.]
3 [Both of these are districts of Prague, recently added (1/1/1922) as of the time of the writing, and therefore suitably remote.]
4 [A suburb of Prague at the time. I think Čapek would find it funny that it is now one of the outermost districts of Prague itself, the city proper having grown significantly since the 1920s.]
5 Arcturus--the clear, reddish star in the constellation of Boötes, hurtling through the cosmic abyss at a speed of 500,000 kilometers per hour [see, the real footnotes are just as ridiculous as mine--Andrew]; Altair--one of the stars in the summer constellation of the Eagle; Albireo--the name of the topaz yellow and sapphire-blue double star forming the southern end of the Swan or the Northern Cross, one of the three significant constellations of the summer sky.
6 A former silk merchant on Železná Street in Prague [Thank God for these footnotes, because if this needed to be explained to citizens of Prague in the 1920s, I and Google couldn't do a thing about it]
7 [The original says "Ottoman half-moon," and I love Čapek too much for a [sic], but am also too pedantic not to point that out. I have no idea what he means by "silver palaces," that's for sure.]
8 [Originally "by very long ells/elbows," the word for the unit of measure "ell" being exactly the same as the part of the body, instead of just being etymologically related as in English.]
As far as the stars are concerned, their astral and planetary influence on human destiny is strongly in doubt, and as far as the influence of the moon is concerned, educated people only recognize its important to the extent of the tides, the palolo worm,1 the growth of certain plants and bacteria, and perhaps also on sleepwalkers, poets, lovers and cats. I, however, am not concerning myself with these effects; I am concerned with the fact that if a denizen of the streets lifts his eyes from the ground, he cannot see the twinkling of the stars in the sky, and cannot see the face of the moon. If goes out on the threshold of his building, he does not even meet his nearest neighbors Venus or Jupiter. He is not permitted to direct his steps by the moon. He doesn’t even know if the night sky is black or white. He lives in a starless cavern like an olm,2 but he does not realize it. The olm probably does not realize it either.
The man on the streets lives in the city, and sometimes in a very large one, but he does not live in the universe, for he does not live under the stars. He lives among a million people, but not among a million stars. His world ends in Vysočany or Bubeneč3 instead of ending at Arcturus or the Milky Way; it’s really quite a small little world, for it does not go on into infinity. It doesn’t even matter if you study the star charts or can differentiate Altair from Albireo;4 it is more important to just be able to convince yourself whenever you want that the stars are still up there and that the cosmos exists. The man on the street has to go all the way out to Zbraslav5 to spot the universe; but the man at the periphery is in the universe as soon as he stands at his own door and looks up. If people met at night under the stars instead of under lamps, I think that they would not be easily able to talk about politics or the terrible state of things; it’s easier to talk of love, of the next day, and of other quiet and serious things under the stars. Under the stars you can go crazy or fall in love, but you can’t get really aggravated. Secret astral influences do exist; the stars have a powerful influence on a person who looks at them, but they have no influence on someone who reads the glowing advertisements for the Lyon Works6or reads theater reviews at lunch. A man under the stars is a participant in the grandiose glory of the world; he is crowned by those stars themselves.
The effect of the moon is more profound. I don’t even mean the splendor of the moonlit night, the supernatural beauty of the Ottoman crescent, or the silver palaces on the moon7; I have the lunar phases and quarters in mind. A man who lives in the street conducts himself by the calendar; he knows it is the first or the fifteenth or the seventeenth, by which he is fatigued by everything brought to him by the merry-go-round of time. His time is not sacredly and lightly inscribed in the phases of the moon. His life is not divided into heavenly quarters, and does not consist of light and dark periods. When he pays his rent on the first it is no eternal recurrence of time as it is when the moon is full. The time between two full moons is more profound and solemn than the time which comes between the first and the last. Time for a man of the city is a mere date, is it just a number and in no way a heavenly phenomenon; it does not come from eternity, which is the time of the universe. A man who sees the face of the moon lives not by the ticking clock on the wall, but by the secretive timepieces of the planets; consequently he measures time, by very long feet, if I may say so.8
The last time I moved I intended to move alone to a wild and abandoned part of the city, but instead I found that I had moved much farther away: out to the moon and to the vicinity of the stars.
1926
______
1 ["The worm lives in the shallow waters in the coral reefs. During its main breeding season , which occurs on the second or third day after the third quarter of the moon in October or November, the worms produce segments which are engorged with sperm or eggs . These segments break off at sunrise, rise to the surface, and release their gametes into the sea . The local villagers and fishermen collect these segments in large quantities as it is a popular delicacy. The gelatinous mass of worms is baked or fried and then eaten." (courtesy here. Mmmm. "Mblalolo" in the original, which is fascinating to me, as it does not seem like a permissible syllable onset a Malayo-Polynesian language. [EDIT: Fijian has a prenasalized "mb" permissible as an onset; not sure about the "l," though.]
2 [The olm. Sure, I could have said "salamander, but it's actually a close translation, and of course, I love little words I rarely see used.]
3 [Both of these are districts of Prague, recently added (1/1/1922) as of the time of the writing, and therefore suitably remote.]
4 [A suburb of Prague at the time. I think Čapek would find it funny that it is now one of the outermost districts of Prague itself, the city proper having grown significantly since the 1920s.]
5 Arcturus--the clear, reddish star in the constellation of Boötes, hurtling through the cosmic abyss at a speed of 500,000 kilometers per hour [see, the real footnotes are just as ridiculous as mine--Andrew]; Altair--one of the stars in the summer constellation of the Eagle; Albireo--the name of the topaz yellow and sapphire-blue double star forming the southern end of the Swan or the Northern Cross, one of the three significant constellations of the summer sky.
6 A former silk merchant on Železná Street in Prague [Thank God for these footnotes, because if this needed to be explained to citizens of Prague in the 1920s, I and Google couldn't do a thing about it]
7 [The original says "Ottoman half-moon," and I love Čapek too much for a [sic], but am also too pedantic not to point that out. I have no idea what he means by "silver palaces," that's for sure.]
8 [Originally "by very long ells/elbows," the word for the unit of measure "ell" being exactly the same as the part of the body, instead of just being etymologically related as in English.]
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
How Houses Smell
I don’t mean any consecrated odor, steam from the washing or even the stink of the kids’ diapers. I live in a young neighborhood which is growing with the ringing of hammers, the clatter of scaffolding and the strokes of the carpenter’s axes, and if you bound my eyes and led me through the city I would know my way by smells: there is an old street, those are new buildings, still partly uninhabited, there is an unsold house, while the foundation on that house is caving in. For the building smells of the man, gives our the odor of the matter from which it has arisen, and it takes decades before odors settle, and the dry, dusty stink of accidents hang in the air.
At first it reeks of barren earth; the cold, damp, sepulchral breath of the bedrock below wafts up from the dug foundations. But there are already piles of bricks set up around, and well-baked bricks have an odor almost like that of bread; the dry oven sighs out of them, and the hot, mealy dust drifts off of them. Then the slaked lime blows in, which stings the eyes and sticks in the throat, and there is also the cold, raw smell of the mortar, which hangs coarse and close. The smell of new construction is cold and raw like the air in a cave, and campfires and good lamps will be needed to make this into a dwelling.
Then the boards go up and the scaffolding rises, to let the wall-builders up and to change the smell, for the odor of wood is solid and good; wood smells of home, of ripeness, and its pitchy, sunny exhalations cover the lime reek of the plaster and the muddy smell of concrete. And let us not forget the sourish stench of iron, girders, pipes, and wires, together with the oily fetor of lacquer; or even the smoky reek of charcoal smoke used to cure the walls. And here we have the rank and file of carpenters and joiners as they raise the timbers, lay the floors and install the windows and doors; wood prevails and its resinous, balsamic odor drifts out of the clangorous construction. To that are added the smells of turpentine, varnish and oils, the stink of coats of wallpaper pastes and paint. And finally the well-scrubbed building sighs lightly and smells of soap like a boy fresh out of the bath on Sunday; the cool emptiness and strange hollowness of new construction exhales out the open windows.
And a new building does not lose its own odor right away; just as new clothes smell of the textile factory and new shoes of the tannery, the house smells for a long while of the building site. Sir, it is a lng time before people feel at home in it; the building yet hems them in like some temporary enclosure, not yet grown around them like the shell on a small, it comes out strongly here and overpowers over there like new clothes. It must be extinguished somewhat to render it fit for people; you could say it must ripen for a few years. It only becomes a full, real house when it stops being a new building; then it becomes not just the work of the builders, but also of the people who live in it. From the laundry in the cellar to the smoking chimney it sings of humanity and warmth, until one day when men come with picks and shovels, and it smells, for one last time, of the grist mill, the meal, ripeness and its own special desiccation, reminiscent of the scent of hay and rotting wood.
1933
______
At first it reeks of barren earth; the cold, damp, sepulchral breath of the bedrock below wafts up from the dug foundations. But there are already piles of bricks set up around, and well-baked bricks have an odor almost like that of bread; the dry oven sighs out of them, and the hot, mealy dust drifts off of them. Then the slaked lime blows in, which stings the eyes and sticks in the throat, and there is also the cold, raw smell of the mortar, which hangs coarse and close. The smell of new construction is cold and raw like the air in a cave, and campfires and good lamps will be needed to make this into a dwelling.
Then the boards go up and the scaffolding rises, to let the wall-builders up and to change the smell, for the odor of wood is solid and good; wood smells of home, of ripeness, and its pitchy, sunny exhalations cover the lime reek of the plaster and the muddy smell of concrete. And let us not forget the sourish stench of iron, girders, pipes, and wires, together with the oily fetor of lacquer; or even the smoky reek of charcoal smoke used to cure the walls. And here we have the rank and file of carpenters and joiners as they raise the timbers, lay the floors and install the windows and doors; wood prevails and its resinous, balsamic odor drifts out of the clangorous construction. To that are added the smells of turpentine, varnish and oils, the stink of coats of wallpaper pastes and paint. And finally the well-scrubbed building sighs lightly and smells of soap like a boy fresh out of the bath on Sunday; the cool emptiness and strange hollowness of new construction exhales out the open windows.
And a new building does not lose its own odor right away; just as new clothes smell of the textile factory and new shoes of the tannery, the house smells for a long while of the building site. Sir, it is a lng time before people feel at home in it; the building yet hems them in like some temporary enclosure, not yet grown around them like the shell on a small, it comes out strongly here and overpowers over there like new clothes. It must be extinguished somewhat to render it fit for people; you could say it must ripen for a few years. It only becomes a full, real house when it stops being a new building; then it becomes not just the work of the builders, but also of the people who live in it. From the laundry in the cellar to the smoking chimney it sings of humanity and warmth, until one day when men come with picks and shovels, and it smells, for one last time, of the grist mill, the meal, ripeness and its own special desiccation, reminiscent of the scent of hay and rotting wood.
1933
______
Friday, April 24, 2009
It bears repeating, but the Čapek I'm posting? I'm pretty sure you're the first people to read it in English. Ever. Same as last year.
So too, with this Fuks I've just started the second draft of.
______
"It was long ago, very long ago, when I sent a letter from Prague to Daniel Potocky, lover of food and drink, to make time on Saturday and Sunday and come out to see me at my cottage. I wrote the letter with deliberate ambiguity, and yet urgently, closing with the remark that he certainly would not regret coming. And I sketched out a little map of how to get there once he got off the highway at Benešov.
I imagined he would brag about it to Jána, who was his intellectual superior many times over, and he did. She called me at the neighbors’ cabin, for they had a telephone. I didn’t even have electricity there, relying on flashlights and oil lamps for light.
“He was excited,” Jána divulged to me, “to see what I would make of it. Why he was invited. I told him it seemed like you were preparing a feast—you know how he likes to eat—and that you wanted him there for mysterious reasons.”
Jána had never studied psychology; she was a chemist at the medical examiner’s office, but she had always had interesting insights into people’s personalities. What she had told Potocky about my letter seemed wise.
That memorable June Saturday was unusually hot and humid, as were the days preceding it. People complained of the humidity and torpor, the swimming pool was full of people, and they had even started to run out of beer and soft drinks. “If only it would rain a little,” people said, looking longingly at the sky whenever it started to cloud over. But no rain came. I had no beer or soft drinks at the cabin, just ordinary water, ten bottles of wine, two bottles of Greek cognac, a bottle of middling whisky and an exceptional banana schnapps. I also had three bottles of vodka, four tins of tomato juice and plenty of pepper. “If I mix him drinks,” I thought that Saturday, “he’ll be done. Sooner than I want, and I can’t have that today. He’ll just drink wine, which he can easily stand.” Before his arrival I looked over the glassware and the things for dinner. Then I went into the attic of the cottage, where I had a sort of study, which contained a low round table and a comfortable armchair, and I readied the pistol.
______
There's your hook. Unfortunately ninety-eight percent of it still only exists in my handwriting. If you liked it, ask me where I am with it round the summer solstice.
So too, with this Fuks I've just started the second draft of.
______
"It was long ago, very long ago, when I sent a letter from Prague to Daniel Potocky, lover of food and drink, to make time on Saturday and Sunday and come out to see me at my cottage. I wrote the letter with deliberate ambiguity, and yet urgently, closing with the remark that he certainly would not regret coming. And I sketched out a little map of how to get there once he got off the highway at Benešov.
I imagined he would brag about it to Jána, who was his intellectual superior many times over, and he did. She called me at the neighbors’ cabin, for they had a telephone. I didn’t even have electricity there, relying on flashlights and oil lamps for light.
“He was excited,” Jána divulged to me, “to see what I would make of it. Why he was invited. I told him it seemed like you were preparing a feast—you know how he likes to eat—and that you wanted him there for mysterious reasons.”
Jána had never studied psychology; she was a chemist at the medical examiner’s office, but she had always had interesting insights into people’s personalities. What she had told Potocky about my letter seemed wise.
That memorable June Saturday was unusually hot and humid, as were the days preceding it. People complained of the humidity and torpor, the swimming pool was full of people, and they had even started to run out of beer and soft drinks. “If only it would rain a little,” people said, looking longingly at the sky whenever it started to cloud over. But no rain came. I had no beer or soft drinks at the cabin, just ordinary water, ten bottles of wine, two bottles of Greek cognac, a bottle of middling whisky and an exceptional banana schnapps. I also had three bottles of vodka, four tins of tomato juice and plenty of pepper. “If I mix him drinks,” I thought that Saturday, “he’ll be done. Sooner than I want, and I can’t have that today. He’ll just drink wine, which he can easily stand.” Before his arrival I looked over the glassware and the things for dinner. Then I went into the attic of the cottage, where I had a sort of study, which contained a low round table and a comfortable armchair, and I readied the pistol.
______
There's your hook. Unfortunately ninety-eight percent of it still only exists in my handwriting. If you liked it, ask me where I am with it round the summer solstice.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
The Painting of Martin Blaskowitz has a first draft. I first put pen to paper on June 4, 2008, almost eleven months ago.
It took longer than the first book I did, which is probably as it should be.
"And I don't know what I'm feeling right now, but it's intense. I just walked around the block without really registering it. My hands were shaking, and an eye was twitching a few pages from the finish. It's...man. I won't be at all surprised if no one has the same experience reading it, thinks it's ho-hum or predictable or whatever...but still. I took that text word by word, and performed some act on each of those components, and then wrote it all down. I owned it...but it's doing a good job of owning me."
I wrote that three and a half years ago and five or six projects ago.
I owned this one too, and they all do a good job of owning me. I need a nap.
It took longer than the first book I did, which is probably as it should be.
"And I don't know what I'm feeling right now, but it's intense. I just walked around the block without really registering it. My hands were shaking, and an eye was twitching a few pages from the finish. It's...man. I won't be at all surprised if no one has the same experience reading it, thinks it's ho-hum or predictable or whatever...but still. I took that text word by word, and performed some act on each of those components, and then wrote it all down. I owned it...but it's doing a good job of owning me."
I wrote that three and a half years ago and five or six projects ago.
I owned this one too, and they all do a good job of owning me. I need a nap.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Worries.
I've been translating a set amount (40-42 lines) of the most recent Fuks novel I've been working on daily, with only five days off, since the third week of March.
I have two more days worth of work to do and I'm done with that, and am really at a stage (well, I was at this stage before I started this book, if not before) where first-draft translating, though excellent mental practice, is not what I need to be doing.
I must confront the fear that that is really all that I am capable of, that the neatly-defined first-draft step is all I have the patience for, that I will do nothing but swim in paralysis at the massively branching possibilities of editing. Writing this post is hopefully a decent start.
[EDIT: Not _much_ life-spanning melodrama is intended here, merely an articulation of something I've been dealing with for years--that I have more fun writing a first draft than subsequent drafts, but first drafts aren't exactly disseminable. Or even legible.]
I have two more days worth of work to do and I'm done with that, and am really at a stage (well, I was at this stage before I started this book, if not before) where first-draft translating, though excellent mental practice, is not what I need to be doing.
I must confront the fear that that is really all that I am capable of, that the neatly-defined first-draft step is all I have the patience for, that I will do nothing but swim in paralysis at the massively branching possibilities of editing. Writing this post is hopefully a decent start.
[EDIT: Not _much_ life-spanning melodrama is intended here, merely an articulation of something I've been dealing with for years--that I have more fun writing a first draft than subsequent drafts, but first drafts aren't exactly disseminable. Or even legible.]
Spring Storms
There are two kinds of spring storms: the first kind are those that occur in nature with rumblings, sheets of waters, hail, rainbows, and other ancillary phenomena through to the victorious birdsong at the end. The second kind of spring storm is that which has already begun to take hold in the winter, when the heads of the household begin to notice that they need to paint and knock a hole in the wall here and fix this up and make sure the stove is in order and plane this, hammer that, add a little more mortar to this, seal, lacquer, upholster and the like. There is an astonishing array of professions who wait to come into your home with stepladders and scrub-brushes and screwdrivers and mallets and putty knives and tubs and a bunch of other implements, with whose help they will turn all the wood in your domicile upside-down. Vast and elemental is the destructive power of human ingenuity.
As far as I can tell, this storm of work is most often unleashed in human accommodations in the spring. I have no conception what all of these professionals do in the winter; perhaps they give themselves over to their victorious invasions and strategies of the year before. It starts out very innocently as a rule; one man comes to your house to have a look around and tells you they will begin work in a week or after the first of the month. Well, nothing can wait a week’s time or until after the first; two or three days later you start to grumble that that darned man should just come and start already. In this manner you are adroitly brought into a state of impatience, and you await an invasion of unfriendly forces as though it were a divine blessing. When you are well and truly worked over, your bell rings at seven o’clock in the morning and some skinny guy at the door proclaims that he is there to work. And he starts to work up a storm with the help of some hammers, chisels, and other tools.
All of the other professionals have been waiting for this moment, and the varnishers and joiners and glaziers and painters and paperhangers and installers all rush in and begin to quarrel about who is in the way of whom. Don’t get involved, keep your hat on and let them sort it out amongst themselves; from this moment on you have become an insignificant, even unnecessary creature in your own house who isn’t even worth the energy to be told off. The already-named specialists suddenly each to each demolish something else; you have to recognize that they have the matter in hand. A half a day later your apartment is leveled to the ground, and when lunch-time comes they sit victoriously amongst the ruins, eating head cheese and talking about things in Unhošť or Strančice.1 In spite of your dismay at this man-made swath of destruction you are a little excited that it has gone so quickly. “So,” you say ebulliently to these resting men, “you’ll have it all back together by tomorrow, then?”
But to your surprise: the day after tomorrow instead of this terrible invasion there’s only one man there fiddling with something in the middle of the ruins. The day after that is a Sunday or a holiday and you are resigned to stew in peace on the rubbish heap which once was your place of residence. Them comes a strange and protracted stage when it is a “work in progress,” though this is not at all visible, the dust and filth waxes, the scraps of wood and the splinters, bread crumbs and other sorts of chaos, out of which a new reality does not appear. The following stage is one of mute despair: you come to the realization that the items in the world will never again be put back in order, the situation is clearly helpless and that you cannot expect better days.
And one day quiet surrounds you, the stepladders and buckets and hammers are gone, and you come out into your reborn living room somewhat cautiously, like a farmer surveying his fields after a storm, to determine the damages after the elements have been unleashed. Well, the farmer says, a man has to find some good in this; this is broken, and that’s a little knocked-down over there… and finally he says to himself, with the indestructible optimism of the human race: “Well, it could have been a lot worse.”
1931
______
1 [Central Bohemian towns well outside of the Prague metro area now, let alone eighty years ago.]
As far as I can tell, this storm of work is most often unleashed in human accommodations in the spring. I have no conception what all of these professionals do in the winter; perhaps they give themselves over to their victorious invasions and strategies of the year before. It starts out very innocently as a rule; one man comes to your house to have a look around and tells you they will begin work in a week or after the first of the month. Well, nothing can wait a week’s time or until after the first; two or three days later you start to grumble that that darned man should just come and start already. In this manner you are adroitly brought into a state of impatience, and you await an invasion of unfriendly forces as though it were a divine blessing. When you are well and truly worked over, your bell rings at seven o’clock in the morning and some skinny guy at the door proclaims that he is there to work. And he starts to work up a storm with the help of some hammers, chisels, and other tools.
All of the other professionals have been waiting for this moment, and the varnishers and joiners and glaziers and painters and paperhangers and installers all rush in and begin to quarrel about who is in the way of whom. Don’t get involved, keep your hat on and let them sort it out amongst themselves; from this moment on you have become an insignificant, even unnecessary creature in your own house who isn’t even worth the energy to be told off. The already-named specialists suddenly each to each demolish something else; you have to recognize that they have the matter in hand. A half a day later your apartment is leveled to the ground, and when lunch-time comes they sit victoriously amongst the ruins, eating head cheese and talking about things in Unhošť or Strančice.1 In spite of your dismay at this man-made swath of destruction you are a little excited that it has gone so quickly. “So,” you say ebulliently to these resting men, “you’ll have it all back together by tomorrow, then?”
But to your surprise: the day after tomorrow instead of this terrible invasion there’s only one man there fiddling with something in the middle of the ruins. The day after that is a Sunday or a holiday and you are resigned to stew in peace on the rubbish heap which once was your place of residence. Them comes a strange and protracted stage when it is a “work in progress,” though this is not at all visible, the dust and filth waxes, the scraps of wood and the splinters, bread crumbs and other sorts of chaos, out of which a new reality does not appear. The following stage is one of mute despair: you come to the realization that the items in the world will never again be put back in order, the situation is clearly helpless and that you cannot expect better days.
And one day quiet surrounds you, the stepladders and buckets and hammers are gone, and you come out into your reborn living room somewhat cautiously, like a farmer surveying his fields after a storm, to determine the damages after the elements have been unleashed. Well, the farmer says, a man has to find some good in this; this is broken, and that’s a little knocked-down over there… and finally he says to himself, with the indestructible optimism of the human race: “Well, it could have been a lot worse.”
1931
______
1 [Central Bohemian towns well outside of the Prague metro area now, let alone eighty years ago.]
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Resurrection
When I was a little boy playing in the fields and wiping my nose on my sleeve, every year I experienced one moment of ceremonial excitement, and that was resurrection. We1 had a deacon, may God grant him eternal praise, and he was supernaturally fat: spiritually, officially, exaltedly fat; his rotundity had none of the vulgarity of the lay people, but there was some special divine love visible in it—in short, he had an immaculate deacon's corpulence. And when our town square glowed forth in the mild spring evening with rows of candles in the windows, and a flow of white-dressed ministrants flowed out the cathedral doors with burning candles, and the large white figure of the catechist behind them, and then the deacon himself in golden vestments with the shining monstrance under the silken baldachin2, that being carried by Mr. Kut’ak and Mr. Blahouš and two other municipal leaders, and everyone dressed in black with glittering furs, with Mr. Temín and the town choir trumpeted the sacred, ever-so-sacred intrada, and four ministrants ringing little bells, and two little boys swinging censers, and Nyklíček the sacristan ringing the giant bell, ding dong, ding dong, and lo, hallelujah, hosanna, hooray! The deacon sailed along like a fantastic, glowing cloud, redolent of incense, there it was, God, so beautiful, so unusually beautiful, that I (a low and godless boy) cast myself on my sinful knee, unable to tear my eyes from those slowly-moving lights, candles, tongues of flames, banners and gonfalons3, torches and the monstrance and the baldachin and all that glory, and my stomach rose in envious, wretched bitterness: why was my father, my big, strong, and dignified father not carrying the baldachin behind the deacon, or at least a banner or the littlest light; and that was the yearly pain of a godless boy.
Since then I have not witnessed a resurrection, because I do not want to spoil that one great and sacred impression, but every year around White Saturday a certain Catholic nostalgia befalls me. And now tell me that it is aestheticism! Well, of course I was quite the aesthete at age eight, the same sort as the natives in the Congo or New Caledonia who watch their own processions and dancing magicians and torches and other such wonders; the same aesthete as the citizen of Prague or Madrid or I don’t know which man on the street staring at his famous funerals, parades, processions, and celebrations. This aestheticism is as old as the world and sophisticated as an Indian; it somehow doesn’t suit this age, but…
“Yesterday at twelve o’clock noon the mayor Dr. Baxa welcomed Spring in the Kinský garden in the name of the municipal committee of Greater Prague and the the population of the capital city. Accompanied by representatives of the town councils, the chairs of municipal offices, representatives of the guilds, firefighters, municipal organizations, the uniformed clubs etc. etc., he visited the First-Blossoming Crocus and assured it in a lengthy speech of the overjoyed feelings with which the capital city welcomed Spring into its ancient and celebrated walls. Thereupon the police band struck up music and the chrous Hlahol sang the moving choral “Lo, Spring Arises.” Simultaneously all the bells in Prague rang out, ten cannons were fired from the Mariánská fortress, and squadrons of airplanes crossed over the Vltava River. Innumerable throngs of the citizenry voyaged to the First Crocus, guarded by honorable patrols of the Sokol, security forces, municipal clubs and the Worker’s Gymnastic Union…”4
“Our president welcomed Spring at an intimate celebration in the Castle garden. Nuncio Micara5 expressed tremendous feelings of joy in the name of the diplomatic council, and they along with the government and its representatives welcomed spring in general and especially into the territory of a state as flourishing and wisely governed as is Czechoslovakia…”
“All political parties took part in the arrival of Spring with meetings and camps of people, after which they departed in streams for general merriment in Stromovka park…”
“The general inspector of the Czechoslovak army saluted Spring at a formal parade undertaken at the training-ground near Invalidovna. The sun extended its blessed rays from early that morning…”
Why go on like this? Democracy is beautiful, fine, but it doesn’t know how to celebrate at all. Mayor Baxa did welcome the participants of the trade fair, but he did not welcome the First Crocus, nor will he, although the first crocus is something better and more sacred than the whole trade fair. And our mayor is not leading the ceremonial Procession Over The Frozen Vltava, nor is he celebrating the fantastic and exciting Departure of The Ice to the peals of the cathedral bells. We still accept Christmas and Easter and All Saints from the fading hand of the church; old Catholicism still maintains the sacred division of the year, but we the godless have found nothing, nothing at all, to replace it. I do not know what contemporary democracy is lacking more: a little poetry or a little positive thought.
1923
______
1 i.e, in [the author's hometown of] Upice, [which we've seen before]
2 [Wikipedia was again very helpful with some of the specialized religious terminology.]
3 [Sure, I could just call it a pennant, but I remember the word from a translation of the Song Of Roland I have back in Vermont, and if it can be used in a baseball context, I consider myself justified enough.]
4 [The Sokols (Falcons) were a patriotic Czechoslovak national organization. The DTJ (Workers' Gymnastic Union) was an phys. ed organization founded by tailors(!) in 1897. Both still exist, at least with American successors. Also, say hello to Mayor Baxa again!]
5. The [main] papal diplomat.
Since then I have not witnessed a resurrection, because I do not want to spoil that one great and sacred impression, but every year around White Saturday a certain Catholic nostalgia befalls me. And now tell me that it is aestheticism! Well, of course I was quite the aesthete at age eight, the same sort as the natives in the Congo or New Caledonia who watch their own processions and dancing magicians and torches and other such wonders; the same aesthete as the citizen of Prague or Madrid or I don’t know which man on the street staring at his famous funerals, parades, processions, and celebrations. This aestheticism is as old as the world and sophisticated as an Indian; it somehow doesn’t suit this age, but…
“Yesterday at twelve o’clock noon the mayor Dr. Baxa welcomed Spring in the Kinský garden in the name of the municipal committee of Greater Prague and the the population of the capital city. Accompanied by representatives of the town councils, the chairs of municipal offices, representatives of the guilds, firefighters, municipal organizations, the uniformed clubs etc. etc., he visited the First-Blossoming Crocus and assured it in a lengthy speech of the overjoyed feelings with which the capital city welcomed Spring into its ancient and celebrated walls. Thereupon the police band struck up music and the chrous Hlahol sang the moving choral “Lo, Spring Arises.” Simultaneously all the bells in Prague rang out, ten cannons were fired from the Mariánská fortress, and squadrons of airplanes crossed over the Vltava River. Innumerable throngs of the citizenry voyaged to the First Crocus, guarded by honorable patrols of the Sokol, security forces, municipal clubs and the Worker’s Gymnastic Union…”4
“Our president welcomed Spring at an intimate celebration in the Castle garden. Nuncio Micara5 expressed tremendous feelings of joy in the name of the diplomatic council, and they along with the government and its representatives welcomed spring in general and especially into the territory of a state as flourishing and wisely governed as is Czechoslovakia…”
“All political parties took part in the arrival of Spring with meetings and camps of people, after which they departed in streams for general merriment in Stromovka park…”
“The general inspector of the Czechoslovak army saluted Spring at a formal parade undertaken at the training-ground near Invalidovna. The sun extended its blessed rays from early that morning…”
Why go on like this? Democracy is beautiful, fine, but it doesn’t know how to celebrate at all. Mayor Baxa did welcome the participants of the trade fair, but he did not welcome the First Crocus, nor will he, although the first crocus is something better and more sacred than the whole trade fair. And our mayor is not leading the ceremonial Procession Over The Frozen Vltava, nor is he celebrating the fantastic and exciting Departure of The Ice to the peals of the cathedral bells. We still accept Christmas and Easter and All Saints from the fading hand of the church; old Catholicism still maintains the sacred division of the year, but we the godless have found nothing, nothing at all, to replace it. I do not know what contemporary democracy is lacking more: a little poetry or a little positive thought.
1923
______
1 i.e, in [the author's hometown of] Upice, [which we've seen before]
2 [Wikipedia was again very helpful with some of the specialized religious terminology.]
3 [Sure, I could just call it a pennant, but I remember the word from a translation of the Song Of Roland I have back in Vermont, and if it can be used in a baseball context, I consider myself justified enough.]
4 [The Sokols (Falcons) were a patriotic Czechoslovak national organization. The DTJ (Workers' Gymnastic Union) was an phys. ed organization founded by tailors(!) in 1897. Both still exist, at least with American successors. Also, say hello to Mayor Baxa again!]
5. The [main] papal diplomat.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Pretty Tired Too
Hi, Nick!
Yes, I'm so lazy these days about posting that I'm piggybacking someone else's meta-post about not posting.
It was fascinating to look at the wikipedia page for lomography, for what I assume is the correct derivation for the unfamiliar-to-me appellation of "some lomo douchebag."
There's more Čapek in the pipeline. That's the good thing about a series of short pieces set throughout the course of the calendar year; it gives the merest hint of actual structure while enabling me to take vast swaths of time off.
Yes, I'm so lazy these days about posting that I'm piggybacking someone else's meta-post about not posting.
It was fascinating to look at the wikipedia page for lomography, for what I assume is the correct derivation for the unfamiliar-to-me appellation of "some lomo douchebag."
There's more Čapek in the pipeline. That's the good thing about a series of short pieces set throughout the course of the calendar year; it gives the merest hint of actual structure while enabling me to take vast swaths of time off.
Monday, April 06, 2009
On The Magic of Easter
This then is the truth: Easter has always been as richly embroidered with folk customs and superstitions as Christmas; it is as magical and pagan a holiday as the winter solstice. But there is one great difference: the mysteries of Christmas is to a large extent prophetic, whereas the mysteries of Easter are more akin to conjuring. At Easter no one pours lead or halves apples or cracks walnuts or lights candles or looks into the depths of the water so that the future might appear. No dog barks at Easter to indicate the direction the bridegroom will come from. All of these prophesies belong to Christmas.1 At Easter magic is performed so that we will be happy, so the harvest will be good, and what have you. At Easter you do not pose questions of what will be with magic rituals, but you instead look to effect an enchanting influence on that future. Wash in the brook at dawn, girl, and you will be healthy all year.2 Do this and that, fulfill this magical law or that, and everything will be in order; your future will be in your hands. It is not in your power at Christmas to determine what shape the poured lead will form; you have no influence on whether the core of the apple will be shaped like a cross or a star; you cannot cause your little candle to burn out faster than all the others. But at Easter you are sort of master of your own fate; you do this and you’re be healthy and happy as a clam. So run along and do it.
It might be because Christmas is ruled by the night and Easter by the divine day. Nature sleeps at Christmas and nothing can be done about it, man together with nature sits, hands in his lap, until the winter passes. He cannot reach into the current of events in any way, it’s only a matter of somehow survived until spring. And so he, dreaming and waiting, gets in a mood for fortunetelling. A man with a plow in his hand doesn’t powerlessly ask how the harvest will be, because to a certain level he’s making it happen himself; hail can still come, our drought, but a man does what he can to get his field to grow. He performs magic so that evil powers do now ruin his work and his health; so he sets up candles against storms and says old sayings to ward off disease. At the winter solstice he sits in the gloom with his hands in his lap and longs for omens and signs; show me what will happen to me and mine, for there is no way for me to do this myself. At the vernal equinox he has too much to do already; God be praised, he is again the architect and shaper of his own fate, to a certain extent. And around him everything is moving, nature gives itself to its own grand progress; there is no more of this hibernal fixation and paralysis. And that is why springtime enchantment is entirely different from that of the wintertime; no more of this metaphysical impotence and helplessness, which can only ask fate what will happen, but some action at least, a little force to have a noticeable influence on one’s fortunes.
And I think that we all can have enough of this wintry prophesy. The whole of Europe is given over to it; always these anxious questions about what will happen and how it will turn out. Perhaps it’s time for people everywhere to throw themselves into a springtime enchantment and do something so that things turn out well. If we do this and this, if we fulfill this prerequisite or that, we will be happy and healthy. And every one of us can help with this enchantment--whoever is doing something does not have to ask helplessly what fate has in store. Do not think that we cannot have even the slightest influence on what will be; even the smallest influence is better than mere prophesy. That is the whole secret of spring magic: what is going to happen is under our control.
1935
______
1 [Most if not all of these are outlined many places on the web, say here, for instance.]
2 [People love discussing the pomlázka tradition (myself included) but there are other Easter traditions as well, some noted here.]
It might be because Christmas is ruled by the night and Easter by the divine day. Nature sleeps at Christmas and nothing can be done about it, man together with nature sits, hands in his lap, until the winter passes. He cannot reach into the current of events in any way, it’s only a matter of somehow survived until spring. And so he, dreaming and waiting, gets in a mood for fortunetelling. A man with a plow in his hand doesn’t powerlessly ask how the harvest will be, because to a certain level he’s making it happen himself; hail can still come, our drought, but a man does what he can to get his field to grow. He performs magic so that evil powers do now ruin his work and his health; so he sets up candles against storms and says old sayings to ward off disease. At the winter solstice he sits in the gloom with his hands in his lap and longs for omens and signs; show me what will happen to me and mine, for there is no way for me to do this myself. At the vernal equinox he has too much to do already; God be praised, he is again the architect and shaper of his own fate, to a certain extent. And around him everything is moving, nature gives itself to its own grand progress; there is no more of this hibernal fixation and paralysis. And that is why springtime enchantment is entirely different from that of the wintertime; no more of this metaphysical impotence and helplessness, which can only ask fate what will happen, but some action at least, a little force to have a noticeable influence on one’s fortunes.
And I think that we all can have enough of this wintry prophesy. The whole of Europe is given over to it; always these anxious questions about what will happen and how it will turn out. Perhaps it’s time for people everywhere to throw themselves into a springtime enchantment and do something so that things turn out well. If we do this and this, if we fulfill this prerequisite or that, we will be happy and healthy. And every one of us can help with this enchantment--whoever is doing something does not have to ask helplessly what fate has in store. Do not think that we cannot have even the slightest influence on what will be; even the smallest influence is better than mere prophesy. That is the whole secret of spring magic: what is going to happen is under our control.
1935
______
1 [Most if not all of these are outlined many places on the web, say here, for instance.]
2 [People love discussing the pomlázka tradition (myself included) but there are other Easter traditions as well, some noted here.]
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
What? No Meta-Post?
Hugh Kenner, in The Pound Era
"If we no longer think, with Swift and Johnson, that languages ought to be stabilized, we still feel that their proper condition is stability. The admission of ain’t to a large American dictionary provoked newspaper hysteria in 1961-62. That in Canto 53 the same emperor appears indifferently as Tcheou Kong and Chao Kong causes many readers uneasiness outweighing the instruction the Canto affords, and a scholarly convention in citing the word ideogramic is to tag it [sic], meaning “not so in my dictionary.” Words, since the 18th century, have seemed fixed upon a rigid and authorized grid, each little violation of which incites the Great Anarch.
Behind such feelings lies the notion of a stable shared world in which all men’s senses participate and the features of which have been labeled by agreement, though different agreements obtain in Italy and in Sweden. Gatto, say the Italians for some reason, and katt the Swedes; it would be simpler if they said the same thing, but anyhow cats are cats. The linguistic contracts, being arbitrary, are fragile, and the only code book, Webster’s or Larousse’s, wards off unspeakable disorder. An alternative notion, that names should be left in place because they are somehow right, is traceable in theory to Plato’s Cratylus but in practice to costive notions of correctness. Both positions were still seriously defended in the early 19th century. Both linger in the average literate psyche. Both were rendered obsolescent by the slow discovery of language, a complex coherent organism that is no more the sum of its constituent words than a rhinoceros is the sum of its constituent cells, an organism that can maintain its identity as it grows and evolves in time; that can remember, that can anticipate, that can mutate. Latin is not a dead language; everyone in Paris speaks it, everyone in Rome, everyone in Madrid. The poetic of our time grows with this discovery."
Borrowed from this Languagehat post. It bears repeating.
"If we no longer think, with Swift and Johnson, that languages ought to be stabilized, we still feel that their proper condition is stability. The admission of ain’t to a large American dictionary provoked newspaper hysteria in 1961-62. That in Canto 53 the same emperor appears indifferently as Tcheou Kong and Chao Kong causes many readers uneasiness outweighing the instruction the Canto affords, and a scholarly convention in citing the word ideogramic is to tag it [sic], meaning “not so in my dictionary.” Words, since the 18th century, have seemed fixed upon a rigid and authorized grid, each little violation of which incites the Great Anarch.
Behind such feelings lies the notion of a stable shared world in which all men’s senses participate and the features of which have been labeled by agreement, though different agreements obtain in Italy and in Sweden. Gatto, say the Italians for some reason, and katt the Swedes; it would be simpler if they said the same thing, but anyhow cats are cats. The linguistic contracts, being arbitrary, are fragile, and the only code book, Webster’s or Larousse’s, wards off unspeakable disorder. An alternative notion, that names should be left in place because they are somehow right, is traceable in theory to Plato’s Cratylus but in practice to costive notions of correctness. Both positions were still seriously defended in the early 19th century. Both linger in the average literate psyche. Both were rendered obsolescent by the slow discovery of language, a complex coherent organism that is no more the sum of its constituent words than a rhinoceros is the sum of its constituent cells, an organism that can maintain its identity as it grows and evolves in time; that can remember, that can anticipate, that can mutate. Latin is not a dead language; everyone in Paris speaks it, everyone in Rome, everyone in Madrid. The poetic of our time grows with this discovery."
Borrowed from this Languagehat post. It bears repeating.
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