Peter Cole, on ekphrasis (and my own musings on mathematical drawing)

They seem like knots, or a strange music’s notes on a staff, in a whorl, like petals opening, to be heard. Something scored. Scars or sores. A soaring. Drawing words.

It is the immediacy of ekphrasis that draws me. The contact. I realize it’s odd to turn to another medium for a sense of immediacy. And yet, as with translation, that palpable sense of relation compels (completes?). And that’s what I’m after — to speak into or through the drawings. To be dyed by their material qualities, as I feel them coming through me, or bringing me into their matrix. To take on their tinge.

Not transparency, but receptivity. Conduction.

As: another medium can sometimes be just that — a medium, through which a spirit’s given voice (tenor, thickness, pitch).

`And this is poetry in the deepest sense — the art of being led and reaching that goes beyond us.’

Odysseus Elytis

And, therefore, ekphrasis too implies a reaching leading to what’s beyond. A conversation.

In its way a betwenness — that’s all.

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Terry Winters

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The darkness of a coupling, say; the recurring twist or torque of it. Because it’s there on paper? Or in me — drawn out by the drawing? A little of each? I have no idea, really, but in this high-resolution Rorschach haze something collective is also tapped. At one drawing’s center, doubled, floats the Hebrew letter ayin/ע — meaning an eye, or a natural fountain, a spring. Numerologically it stands for seventy, which in the tradition points to the number of nations, tongues, and `faces’ through which Scripture is steadily revealed. That is, it encodes the possibility of, and need for, ongoing interpretation (and stands for both translation and the impossibility … of rendering’s ever coming to an end, which may be the truer meaning of the old saw that the work of translation is never done, since some translations are).

The materiality of the letter, of all letters — as building block and spirit trap, a grounding but insurgent tactility — lurks beneath our talk and verse, bringing us actually back to what matters, as matter, involving continual return to beginnings and incessant permutation. It offers us — in other words (and oddly with what words are made of) — a glimpse and deflected glint of the infinite. And so the letter leads to `life’, literally, here, to the faint Hebrew word חיים (hayyim), scribbled in the wings as well.

Or not.

L’hayyim.

A coupling’s darkness.

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So Peter Cole, reflecting on ekphrasis (or the possibility) of painting with words what comes from another medium (in this case, drawing). I add here some additional excerpts from the book On Being Drawn he coauthored with Terry Winters. I add here some of Winters’ drawings, and excerpts from poems/essays by Cole, all of them hopefully relevant to our own attempts at ekphrasis between drawing, mathematics and art, with MC.

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“untitled, 2009”, graphite and gouache on paper, by Terry Winters.

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Draw me after you, let us run, says the Song, of all Songs (1:4) — which the Spanish kabbalists gloss, in their Book of Radiance: `Each letter called to the others.’

And then: The King has brought me into his chambers, construed by that Radiance as — into the midst of letters and their spell, an Eden of understanding, lurking in what we think and dream, write and say.

All those drawings of the Dwelling’ … `all the worlds above depending below upon the letters’ mystery.

And this Eros of our listening —

which yields, in its slightly preposterous way, the prosody these poems aim to embody, in their dwelling on the drawing. An almost homophonic response — to that mute (yet musical) original, as though at Sinai, in Exodus 20, after Scripture has been revealed, all the people saw the sounds (kolot). So in these poems I was writing to hear the drawing.

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Terry Winters

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• Mathematical drawing/undrawing/redrawing (permanent)
• Óscar Muñoz’s temporality
• Mathematical ekphrasis
• Understanding – under/standing and drawing
• Tensions/essential aspects
• Logical (un-)seeing vs geometrical (mis-)moving
• Mathematical drawing vs draughtical (“draftical”) mathematics
• Riemann and the fight against a taboo of using drawing!

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The smudged sounds give rise to lines, a syntax like synapses. Grappa in its capillary action. The narrow descent paradoxically widens out and lifts along a spectrum of endless adjacencies, in every direction, and every inflection,’ as Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev sang, in his gentle Yiddish, `Still You. However You. Only You. Every You …’

You, the viewer? The reader? Whoever you are, and where … Drawing really does — draw us in (to the object rendered and the time taken) and out (of ourselves to further seeing and other surfaces, even souls, or simple tensility sensed).

`My small skill to save a likeness,’ John Berger writes of his own sketching his father’s final face in its coffin.

But in the case of these almost abstract sketches, a likeness of what? And how might that `what’ be tricked into speech?

It isn’t always pleasant. The act itself and the realization — that part of the translation’s depth derives from its movement through death. The total identification with an original leading to its replacement, so that another’s name and lines live on. So the present unfurls as a rickety bridge of resemblances, of resurrections. And the translator, too, passes away again and again through self-effacement faced. For now. And after? An afterlife, after all?

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Here, Peter Cole evokes the closeness to death in the act of translation, and makes it an essential part of drawing. Syntax like synapses truly seems to cut to the heart of drawing. Capillary action (capillary mathematics?). The narrow descent (of what? lymph? a vital fluid? information?) and the adjacencies, in every direction, and every inflection (Leibniz-like theme here?)

The You from Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, possibly the viewer, the reader, the mathematician who hears a proof explained.

And drawing drawing us in and out (to the object rendered, the time! and of ourselves to further seeing)… Drawing and undrawing, drawing and erasing constantly, capillary action. How many times does a mathematician draw/redraw/undraw/redraw a proof until it is seen? Until she is drawn in-to the proof/object and the time taken, until she is drawn out to other surfaces?

What is tensility in mathematics? What is capillarity?

On a poem by Amichai

Do Not Accept

Do not accept these rains that come too late.
Better to linger. Make your pain
An image of the desert. Say it’s said
And do not look to the west. Refuse

To surrender. Try this year too
To live alone in the long summer,
Eat your drying bread, refrain
from tears. And do not learn from

Experience. Take as an example my youth,
My return late at night, what has been written
In the rain of yesteryear. It makes no difference
Now. See your events as my events.
Everything will be as before: Abraham will again
Be Abram. Sarah will be Sarai.

Yehuda Amichai. Translated by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav.

Benjamin Harshav was a Professor of Comparative Literature, a Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature and a Professor of Slavic Languages at Yale University. He had previously been the founder of the Department of Poetics and Comparative Literature and Semiotics at Tel-Aviv University.

This poem by Amichai appears in his essay Fictionality and Fields of Reference, part of his book Poetics.

Harshav starts a phenomenological analysis of the interdependence between phenomena of reference and language.

I am reading it from a model-theoretic perspective; of course, this displacement of interest (from literary narrative to mathematics), and the emphasis on phenomenology, rather than structuralism, makes (for me) an extremely interesting contrast.

That Benjamin Harshav happens to be Udi Hrushovski’s father only adds to the wonder.

Le cimetière marin

Μή, φίλα ψυχά, βίον ἀθάνατον σπεῦδε, τὰν δ’ ἔμπρακτον ἄντλεῖ μαχανάν.

Pindare, Pythiques, III.

En días pasados, en una bahía cercana a Santa Marta, el mar me inspiró muchas fotos. He aquí una pequeña selección.

Y extractos del poema famoso de Valéry, Le cimetière marin.

La mer, la mer, toujours recommencée !
Ô récompense après une pensée
Qu’un long regard sur le calme des dieux !

Quel pur travail de fins éclairs consume
Maint diamant d’imperceptible écume,
Et quelle paix semble se concevoir !
Quand sur l’abîme un soleil se repose,
Ouvrages purs d’une éternelle cause,
Le Temps scintille et le Songe est savoir.

Chienne splendide, écarte l’idolâtre !
Quand, solitaire au sourire de pâtre,
Je pais longtemps, moutons mystérieux,
Le blanc troupeau de mes tranquilles tombes,
Éloignes-en les prudentes colombes,
Les songes vains, les anges curieux !

Sais-tu, fausse captive des feuillages,
Golfe mangeur de ces maigres grillages,
Sur mes yeux clos, secrets éblouissants,
Quel corps me traîne à sa fin paresseuse,
Quel front l’attire à cette terre osseuse ?
Une étincelle y pense à mes absents.

La vie est vaste, étant ivre d’absence,
Et l’amertume est douce, et l’esprit clair.

Ils ont fondu dans une absence épaisse,
L’argile rouge a bu la blanche espèce,
Le don de vivre a passé dans les fleurs !
Où sont des morts les phrases familières,
L’art personnel, les âmes singulières ?
La larve file où se formaient des pleurs.

Les derniers dons, les doigts qui les défendent,
Tout va sous terre et rentre dans le jeu !

Le vent se lève !… Il faut tenter de vivre !

Brisez, mon corps, cette forme pensive !
Buvez, mon sein, la naissance du vent !

Envolez-vous, pages tout éblouies !
Rompez, vagues ! Rompez d’eaux réjouies
Ce toit tranquille où picoraient des focs !

Bellow, To Jerusalem and back

Security measures are strict on flights to Israel, the bags are searched, the men are frisked, and the women have an electronic hoop passed over them, fore and aft. Then hand luggage is opened. No one is very patient. …

Saul Bellow, To Jerusalem and Back, Secker & Warburg, London, 1976.

Reading a memoir written by someone as incredibly able to conjure up images as Saul Bellow is always striking. But it is much, much more striking if the memoir is about a city where you have spent a significant amount of time, also as a visitor, albeit in quite different moments of time. And (I think) it is even much, much more striking if that city happens to be none less than Jerusalem.

… before I left Chicago, the art critic Harold Rosenberg said to me, “Going to Jerusalem? And wondering whether people will talk freely? You’ve got to be kidding, they’ll talk your head off.” (…) In flight, if the door of your plane comes open you are sucked into space. Here in Jerusalem, when you shut your apartment door behind you you fall into a gale of conversation—exposition, argument, harangue, analysis, theory, expostulation, threat and prophecy. …

Bellow spent six months in Jerusalem in the fall and winter of 1976. During those momentous months he meets many people, among them politicians (Yitzhak Rabin who was then the prime minister, Teddy Kollek who was then the mayor – and who officially invited Bellow, as we learn at some point during the memoir, some others – although not Golda Meir), writers (young – back then – A. B. Yehoshua and Amos Oz at some point but also several less-well-known poets) and many other intellectuals, journalists (Jewish and Arab), family members (Russian immigrants), people like his masseur, the Armenian Patriarch. He even goes for dinner with mathematicians and meets Ilya Rips – Bellow’s wife at the time was the Romanian mathematician Alexandra Bellow and she was visiting the Math Institute at Hebrew U while he was on his official visit to people in the city.

… We are invited to dinner by some of Alexandra’s friends—like her, teaching mathematics at the Hebrew University. Pleasant people. … The conversation, as usual, quickly becomes serious. You do not hear much small talk in Jerusalem. Inflation, high taxes, the austerity program make moonlighting necessary. … Alexandra has noticed how busy mathematical colleagues have become. They have to do more teaching; they have less time for research.

After dinner two more guests arrive, Dr. and Mrs. Eliahu Rips. Rips comes from Riga. When the Russians went into Czechoslovakia, Rips, a mathematics student, set himself on fire in protest. The flames were beaten out and Rips was sent to an insane asylum. While there, without books, he solved a famous problem in algebra. When he was released, he emigrated and reached Israel not long before the Yom Kippur War. Since he had no army training, he went to a gas station and offered to work for nothing, feeling that he must make a contribution to Israel’s defense. So for some months he pumped gas, unpaid. He is now teaching at the Hebrew University. He has become not only Orthodox but very devout. Four days a week he studies the Talmud in a yeshiva. …

All this is interspersed with walks in the Old City, with meetings with people in West and East Jerusalem, with living in Mishkenot Sha’ananim in front of the Old City, visiting kibbutzim or even a settlement (Kiryat Arba!) near Hebron.

… Later in the day my friend Professor Joseph Ben-David takes me to the swelling Souk, the public market. On Fridays it closes early. We watch the last-minute pre-Sabbath rush. Perishables are cheap as zero-hour approaches. …

… On my way home, feeling the vodka I’ve drunk with Silk and Schimmel, I pass through the tourists’ lines. But I’ve just had a holiday with two poets (…) The transforming additive: the gift of poetry. You think yourself full of truth when you’ve had a few drinks. I am thinking that some of the politicians I meet are admirable, intelligent men of strong character. But in them the marvelous additive is lacking. It is perhaps astonishing that they aren’t demented by the butcher problems, by the insensate pressure of crisis.

Slowly, Bellow weaves in a very personal perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian problem, allowing many opposing voices to sift through, capturing the pain and harshness of differing viewpoints (the Israeli parents whose son was recently killed, the fields of ’67 and ’73, strewn with corpses, the existential threat to Israel, the memory and fear  –  all of that very real back then and real now, but also the Palestinian girl who proudly stands in front of well-intentioned Jews and tells them she simply doesn’t want them there).

In other hands this sort of memoir could easily become cartoonish, or with viewpoints too narrow or voices confined to the author’s opinions. The author’s opinions are there, to be sure, but they are so cleverly woven into the Jerusalem tapestry of opinions, plans, harsh stories, that a sort of collective call, of collective worry for the city becomes the voice of Jerusalem.

In the end this makes the reading more difficult. The first encounters, peppered by the presence of luminaries such as Isaac Stern, invited roughly at the same time, slowly become heavier. And here is where the memoir becomes a sort of living in Jerusalem testimony: the ever-increasing heaviness of living there, as if gravity was constantly increasing, as if leaving Jerusalem – forgetting its problems, leaving it behind scenes – became impossible after a while.

The memoir formally follows that path. The sadness of leaving such a city is there, very well depicted, but also the sense of relief I am sure many of us have experienced when going back to “normal cities” (London, Chicago, Bogotá) after time spent in Jerusalem. The fact that it takes him a long time to leave the memoir and it goes on and on after having returned to Chicago via London: the conversations with friends, with other politicians, in those two cities but also in a subsequent visit to Stanford, all of them give the impression of lingering Jerusalem, even as far away as California. The appearance of ever differing, ever shifting positions, some of them quite hawkish, some dovish, some more somber about Israel’s future (in 1976), some more positive…

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When you visit the Old City of Jerusalem in search of some specific place you might have visited but whose exact location you don’t quite remember, or a place you saw described in some book or a friend mentioned, finding it can be next to impossible. Which alley? Which little door? Was it in the upper passage or in the lower one? Yes, I do remember it was after the shop where olive lamps – wait, the shop with the guy who offered tea but then haggled crazily? No, the one where the guy switched to Spanish and said he has a Ph.D. in history but is just selling sweets. You almost never can find what you look for yet you always emerge with a sense of having been to a magic (dangerous) place.

Of course, this also happens to Bellow:

… Schimmel and Silk are looking for the weavers’ alley. What they find instead is a big stone stable, once part of a princely establishment. The carved ornaments, all blackened, go back to the fourteenth century, so we are told by two friendly young Arabs who are tinkering with machinery here. Oh, yes, the stable is still used, but the donkeys and mules are out for the day. Dennis Silk sensitively interrogates the young men. They speak Hebrew well enough to give information. The information is for me, of course. (…)

We never do find the looms. Perhaps the weavers have taken a holiday. We buy round sesame buns and…

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… Kahn insists on showing me some ancient baths at the lower end of the Old City and we ask our way through endless lanes, where kids ride donkeys, kick rubber balls, scream, fall from wagons (…) Kahn asks again for his Turkish baths. A candy seller, cutting up one of his large flat sticky cakes, a kind of honeyed millstone, appears indignant. His business is to sell cakes, not to give directions. We get into an arcade where a money changer in a turtleneck tells us to retrace our steps and turn left. He offers to pay me two pounds to the dollar over the official rate. (…) We make our way out of the arcade and inquire of a stout, unshaven storekeeper in Arab headdress and busted shoes who deals in chipped green glassware. He lights up at our question. Yes, of course, he knows.

After conversation (and coffee, and mentioning Chicago where the shopowner’s son studies medicine and the “friendship” with Bellow when he hears he comes from that city), he leads Kahn and Bellow to the baths and…

… I find myself to my joy in an ancient beautiful hot sour-smelling chamber. Divans made up with clouts and old sheets are ranged against the walls for the relaxing clients (…)
“This is not the place I had in mind. The one I wanted to show you is much older,” says Kahn. But I rejoice greatly in this one and ask for nothing better. (…) “I suppose we must give up on the still older bath,” says Kahn. He compensates himself by telling me about Max Nordau.

Boris Zilber, during a long walk, at the Gate of Lions. 2016.

Old City…

The “new” city

Tel Aviv – winter – beach

Bringhurst, looking back in time, but really back

I had already written some notes about Robert Bringhurst, right after having met him personally in Helsinki some months ago. His Everywhere Being is Dancing – twenty pieces of thinking is perhaps less known than his famous book The Elements of Typography. It is however one of the collection of essays that I have read with most trepidation in a long, long time. Perhaps the main point is the difference between Bringhurst’s ideas and those of most of the rest of people: his perspective when discussing poetry, war, society, language, tools, singing, voices, stories puts to shame our extremely narrow interval. Instead of just looking at just thirty centuries of literature, as we usually do (when we want something remote we think Homer or some books of the Hebrew Bible), he ponders perhaps a couple of hundred centuries, he traces our bearings in language, in poetry, in mathematics even, as part of a development started sixty, seventy thousand years ago – the written sentence being much more recent and perhaps ephemeral than we want to admit.

I have to incorporate some of his ideas in a couple of things I am writing. I won’t elaborate more on this at this point – but I do want to quote an excerpt of his essay A Poet and a War on Avdo Međedović, a Montenegrin poet and the permanence of the tradition of epic poetry in the Mediterranean since Agamemnon’s time. But here is the quote:

War in its twenty-first century glory is the nightmare of industrial technology, but the war that most affects my daily life is the Four Century War (c. 1500-c.1900) fought between invading Europeans and retreating Native Americans for the land in which I live. That war, rarely mentioned in the textbooks, left more than six million dead in North America alone, yet it was fought with minimal equipment and very little centralized command. The most devastating weapons used were biological – smallpox bacilli in particular. These agents were often delivered haphazardly, by preindustrial means, yet their effectiveness was huge.

Robert Bringhurst, speaking at the Helsinki Mathematics Department on the structure of Navajo Poetry (in Cháálatsoh, the Origin of Horses). Photo: AV.

שיר ליל שבת (canción de la noche de shabat) – þ-ø-ø

De nuevo una traducción mía (mezclando un poco de la traducción al francés de Francine Kaufman que canta M. Tauber aquí – buscar Shir Leyl Shabbat en la lista de canciones junto a ese video para otra versión bellísima – una versión durante un evento de apoyo a Palestina en Tucumán es también interesante, aunque la grabación es menos buena – es bonita en todo caso esa otra versión, con guitarra argentina, medio chacareada en la segunda parte).

Þ-Ø-Ø   Camino a la Uni, paso por el Colegio de La Salle (ahora convertido en Universidad), sigo por la Carrera 6 evitando tráfico hasta Calle 53, zigzagueando – tarareo o vocalizo mientras bajo por la 53 en la bici este poema/canción para ir aprendiendo

Estas traducciones hacen parte de esa mezcla de poema y canción (en hebreo la palabra shir [שיר] significa a la vez poema y canción – lo cual es increíblemente apropiado) – en este caso el poeta es el enorme Yehudá Amijai (ver notas detalladas y cuidadosas en Le Nouvel Observateur sobre Amijai, escritas por Jean-Luc Despax en 2008) que está ahí en el trasfondo de la cultura de Israel – la música siempre presente, desde ámbitos muy populares hasta Mahler, hasta Mendelssohn, hasta los jazanes/jazaním de sinagoga – los cantores que pueden invocar visiones de hace tres mil años en sus entonaciones de salmos.

Þ-Ø-Ø   Hi ajshav be makom ajer — frenar para dejar pasar peatones, por el andén compartido con cicloruta, carros completamente trancados en nudo en la Carrera 16, en la bici puede uno pasar por el lado — ¿parar en la chocolatería del belga a la vuelta? — veyadaanu heitev ki hagvul — olvido la frase siguiente, ¿era karov veasur o asur solamente? – semáforo pasó a verde, apuro el paso pues estoy a una cuadra de esa esquina

Despax habla en su bello texto/homenaje de los temas de la poesía de Amijai, de la presencia constante de Jerusalén, de la manera como poetas como él lograron abrir un espacio lingüístico para un Israel que lo necesitaba desesperadamente a la hora de su inicio como país. Más importante acaso que la defensa del espacio físico era el crear ese espacio lingüístico absolutamente necesario para la supervivencia y el crecer.

Amijai tiene un manejo de las imágenes y la sorpresa que son increíbles. Pinta a Dios como un mecánico debajo de un carro, el mundo, lleno de grasa, tratando de repararlo. O como un mago en gira. Exprime el amargo de las uvas. La sensación de darse contra la piedra, de piedra estallando, de piedra seca, de Jerusalén. Captura de alguna manera extraña la soledad, la perdición, el amague de entender y la imposibilidad de concluir.

Þ-Ø-Ø   hamitsvá ba shamaim hitjilu — puente peatonal sobre la 30, de Transmilenio: bajar de la bicicleta. Y descansar por un par de minutos, caminando, antes de la recta final por el andén de la 30 hasta el campus – entrada rápida y volar a clase, siempre y cuando se pueda parquear rápido [ahora el 40% de mis estudiantes van en bici a la UN – consecuencia tal vez del mal transporte público, pero seguramente fuente de bien y de salud y de despertar mental]

Un poeta menos central que Amijai, pero también una presencia intelectual importantísima a la hora de crear el país, fue Yonatán Ratosh (nombre de poeta). Uno de sus hijos, Saharon Shelah, se convertiría en décadas siguientes en uno de los mayores abridores de espacios mentales de toda su generación en matemática.

Ignoro si de Ratosh hay poemas transformados en canciones. Me encantaría encontrar. Hasta ahora la mayoría de los poemas convertidos en canciones que he encontrado son de Bialik, de Natán Alterman, de Natán Yonatán, de Yehudá Amijai…

Esta canción/poema, la canción de la noche del shabat, musicalizada por Moshé Wilensky, es fuerte. Los temas son el descanso único de la entrada del shabat, el dejar la guerra de lado aunque sea por un momento, el encerrarse en casa con todo lo bueno y lo malo, el sentir tan cercana la frontera (¿de Palestina? ¿de Egipto? ¿de Siria? ¿de la muerte? ¿de lo misterioso? ¿de lo desconocido? ¿de uno mismo y sus locuras?),  y finalmente, del placer intensísimo que se supone que es la esencia última del shabat. La versión abajo la canta Nurit Galron:

Ven y acompáñame esta noche	Hatavoi elai halaila	התבואי אלי הלילה
Las sábanas ya secas en el patio	Kvasim kvar yavshu bejatser	כבסים כבר יבשו בחצר
La guerra que nunca se sacia	Miljamá sheaf paam lo dai la	מלחמה שאף פעם לא די לה
Ahora está en un lugar distinto	Hi aajshav bemakom ajer	היא עכשיו במקום אחר
Y los caminos que siempre vuelven	Ujvishim shavim bli heref	וכבישים שבים בלי הרף
Solitarios como caballo sin jinete	Levadam kesus bli rojvó	לבדם כסוס בלי רוכבו
Y la casa se cierra de noche	Vehabait nisgar baerev	והבית נסגר בערב
Sobre el bien y el mal que hay en ella	Al hatov veharaa shebo	על הטוב והרע שבו
Y bien sabíamos que la frontera	Veyadaanu heitev ki hagvul	וידענו היטב כי הגבול
Estaba cerca y no podíamos pasar	hu karov veasur lanu sham	הוא קרוב ואסור לנו שם
Padre rezaba y convocaba	Avi hitpalel vayejulu	אבי התפלל ויכולו
La tierra y todos sus ejércitos	Haarets vejol tsvaam	הארץ וכל צבאם
Ejército y tierras usurpadas	Tsavá vehaarets heefilu	צבא והארץ האפילו
Pronto se apaga la luz	Od meaat vejavá haor	עוד מעט וכבה האור
La maravilla iniciada en el cielo	hamitsvá ba shamaim hitjilu	המצווה בה שמיים התחילו
Ambos tendrán que terminarla	Shuv hashnaim tsrijim ligmor	שוב השניים צריכים לגמור

Heaney, away

Mi poeta contemporáneo preferido ha muerto hoy. En medio de noticias de paros, bloqueos, actitudes admirables y justas (campesinos de Boyacá), aburridas y poco imaginativas (bloqueadores de la Universidad), preocupantes (vándalos jóvenes en todas las ciudades grandes del mundo – Londres, París, Bogotá – que expresan cierta rabia tal vez justificada en algunos casos – pero la expresan destruyendo bienes públicos)… veo la noticia de la muerte de Seamus Heaney y aterrizo. Es la realidad más real.

Pocos como él logran capturar el vacío en el estómago de pasar una frontera, de encontrar una fosa común armada por paramilitares (durante el conflicto de Irlanda del Norte), de sentirse barro puro, que finalmente seremos todos. Heaney para mí es en poesía lo que en música es Dylan, sumado con la percepción de un Gracq, pero con la acción (thrust, palabra realmente intraducible) muy anglosajona que para mí logra ese ritmo y esa prosodia que nuestros idiomas latinos (más llanos, más planos, muy líricos sí pero sin la acción del hombro remando que tiene el inglés) como el francés o el español se pierden.

Recuerdo cuando recibí el gran volumen de poemas de Heaney, las obras recolectadas hasta finales del siglo pasado, y durante meses atesoré y leí esos poemas que revelaban como cuadros viscerales – cuadros de Bacon pero acaso aún más biliosos y a la vez diáfanos – esa otra guerra en Irlanda, ese otro campo, esa turba, esas masacres – y esa vida llena de sal marina y verde y entradas del Atlántico que lograba de alguna manera mezclarse con el horror (humano, de la guerra).

Al ver la noticia volví a buscar un poco. No hay que ir muy lejos. Este poema  –  de la frontera de la escritura, vivida como un paso de una frontera (¿Israel-Palestina? ¿Irlanda-Ulster? ¿barrios católicos-barrios protestantes de Belfast? ¿Algún retén en Colombia? ¿Entrar a Estados Unidos o a la Unión Europea?) lo tiene todo. El movimiento, la duda, la expectativa, la vida subyacente, la posibilidad de errar y caer en un vacío, el rifle que puede disparar por error, la respiración contenida. La ambigüedad, a la vez peligrosa y vital. Y mucho más que yo ni veo pero usted sí notará claramente. Como en la escritura.

From The Frontier Of Writing

The tightness and the nilness round that space
when the car stops in the road, the troops inspect
its make and number and, as one bends his face

towards your window, you catch sight of more
on a hill beyond, eyeing with intent
down cradled guns that hold you under cover

and everything is pure interrogation
until a rifle motions and you move
with guarded unconcerned acceleration—

a little emptier, a little spent
as always by that quiver in the self,
subjugated, yes, and obedient.

So you drive on to the frontier of writing
where it happens again. The guns on tripods;
the sergeant with his on-off mike repeating

data about you, waiting for the squawk
of clearance; the marksman training down
out of the sun upon you like a hawk.

And suddenly you’re through, arraigned yet freed,
as if you’d passed from behind a waterfall
on the black current of a tarmac road

past armor-plated vehicles, out between
the posted soldiers flowing and receding
like tree shadows into the polished windscreen.

Seamus Heaney

Umberto Saba, el poeta

Conocía a Saba solamente como novelista – en Barcelona conseguimos su Ernesto – una novela sin terminar, tal vez autobiográfica en inspiración; una de esas novelas de iniciación (al amor, al sexo, a la vida de experimentación) del protagonista – escrita en un lenguaje llano y directo. Ernesto se inicia en el sexo primero con otro hombre (mucho mayor, como un erastes pero a la inversa, pues Ernesto tiene mejor formación (formal) que el hombre mayor, un carguero) y luego con una prostituta – ambas escenas contadas con una sencillez y un respeto por la experiencia del momento realmente impresionantes. También se va formando Ernesto en la lealtad, la amistad, el dejar de ser un niño, el convertirse en un ser humano pleno. El rol de la mentira (con su tío, con su madre) y de las lealtades superpuestas es fascinante. La novela la escribió Saba al final de su vida y quedó inconclusa.

Triestino, como Magris o Svevo, o tangencialmente el mismo James Joyce que se hacía llamar allá Giacomo Joyce.

Trieste es protagonista de la novela Ernesto, obviamente. Curiosamente, ahora que pienso en novelas iniciáticas y en Joyce, recuerdo (obvio, ¿cómo no?) el Retrato del Artista Adolescente, tan fuerte en su momento para mí (y casi todos los de mi edad en el colegio que también leían), tan desvanecido de mi memoria actual. El Portrait era casi barroco comparado con Ernesto, barroco en su catolicismo irlandés repleto de culpas y de castigos. Ernesto no. Aunque el protagonista también pasa por un episodio de culpa (no por el sexo, que disfruta inicialmente, sino por no compartir con su madre el relato de sus nuevas experiencias), este es breve y se disuelve como el sol mediterráneo disolvería una lluvia pasajera en alguna plaza. No se queda perdido en las brumas eternas irlandesas (o bogotanas). En Ernesto, Trieste es una ciudad medio fea medio industrial medio alegre – sobre todo un lugar rápido de tranvías y caminatas ágiles por las calles empinadas, donde la vida ocurre como fotos que van pasando ligeras, sin detenerse a contemplaciones. Es una novela ágil y bella en su ligereza.

Ahora lo descubro como poeta. Y es también muy impresionante. Muy distinto del altisonante e histriónico D’Annunzio contemporáneo suyo; Saba de nuevo en su poesía es muy llano y muy directo – muy anclado en la experiencia de vivir.

Il bel pensiero

Avevo un bel pensiero, e l’ho perduto
Uno di quei pensieri che tra il sonno
e la veglia consolano la casta
adolescenza; e ben di rado poi
fan ritorno fra noi.

Io perseguivo il mio pensiero come
si persegue una belle creatura,
che ne conduce ove a lei piace, ed ecco:
perdi per sempre la sua leggiadria
a una svolta di via.

Una voce profana, un importuno
richiamo il bel pensiero in fuga han messo
Ora lo cerco in ciechi laberinti
d’inferno, e so ch’esser non può lontano
ma che sperarlo è vano.

merce cunningham (Haroldo de Campos)

merce cunningham
(ou: pequeno discurso sobre o metro)

momentos de um
monumento
(móbile) cé-
lere-lento
ao
movimento

ex-
cursos de aboliçāo
da lei da
gravidade

levitaçōes em
câmera
lenta

pés de māos leves
māos de pés ligeiros

trançapés dançarilhos
através de
travesseiros andarinos

músculos minuciosos
cronocorpografogestopoemas

ZENbranças

sem   ponto   focal.

Meseck: Hymnen an die Nacht I (inspirado por los himnos a la noche de Novalis)

—-

Claro, Novalis es sobre todo conocido como un poeta inmenso del romanticismo. Pero sus frases escritas hace dos siglos sobre miles de temas en el Borrador general para una enciclopedia tienen resonancias futuras absolutamente devastadoras. Leyendo a Novalis realmente parece que alguien del siglo 21 se hubiera colado allá y hubiera conversado con él.

Un ejemplo:

645 – Mathematics and Grammar: The difference in the Leibnizian and Newtonian manner of conceiving the infinitesimal calculus rests on the same foundation as the difference between the atomistic theory and the vibration or etheric theory. The fluxion and the differential are opposite conceptions of the mathematical element – together they constitute the mathematical substance. They are based on the proposition x. × y. = +. This plus is the differential or the fluxion of the function of x and y. The proportional division of this plus is the main difficulty for this calculus.

Leibniz also terms the infinitesimal calculus: analysis indivisibilium.
(Constant quantities – constant transitive quantities.)

Infinitesimal calculus really means calculation, division or measurement
of the nondivisible – noncomparable – immeasurable. Analysis indivisibilium = analysis of an individuum – individual calculus – genuinely physical calculus.

(Much) more here.

Más sobre Michaux

Hay más sobre Michaux:

http://www.i-voix.net/article-prolongements-henri-michaux-62981743.html

Los textos de Michaux son extraños, un poco Magritte (otro belga – bueno, Michaux se volvió francés, pero nació y creció en Bélgica). Un trozo: Los deseos satisfechos. Nunca en la vida le hice mal a nadie. Sólo tenía deseos de hacerlo. Luego ya no sentía esos deseos. Los había satisfecho. En la vida nunca realizamos lo que queremos. Si por un feliz asesinato hubieras suprimido a tus cinco enemigos, seguirían causándote molestias. Y es el colmo, tratándose de muertos para cuyas muertes uno se ha tomado tanto trabajo. Pues siempre hay en la ejecución algo que no ha resultado perfecto, mientras que a mi modo puedo matarlos dos veces, veinte veces y más. Cada vez el mismo hombre me ofrece su boca aborrecida que le hundiré entre los hombros hasta causarle la muerte y, una vez realizado ese crimen y el hombre ya enfriado, si algún detalle me molestó, lo levanto en el acto y vuelvo a asesinarlo con los retoques apropiados. Por eso en la realidad, como suele decirse, no le hago mal a nadie; ni siquiera a mis enemigos. …

Henri Michaux – Sin título

Buscando un libro para Alejandro el otro día en Casa Tomada (una librería que no conocía, en Palermo, y que resultó mucho mejor de lo que esperaba) me encontré con una maravilla de libro de Henri Michaux – una Antología poética entre 1927 y 1986, en edición bilingüe español-francés, publicada por Adriana Hidalgo.

Michaux me trajo a la memoria otra librería – la Oma gloriosa de los años ochenta, con sus cuatro pisos repletos de libros en inglés, en francés, en alemán, en italiano, en español, ahí en plena Carrera 15 con Calle 82 en Bogotá. Además de buenos libros (qué refrescante fue la llegada de esa librería en esa época) traían discos de acetato que me encantaban.

El olor a cera de esa Oma aún invade mi recuerdo. Era el olor de la promesa de muchos libros de Alfaguara, de Siruela, de Folio, de nfr, de Penguin – en épocas en que la ventana al mundo externo estaba ahí.

Un libro de Michaux muchas veces me hizo guiños y nunca lo compré. Era el viaje a oriente. Leía trozos allá en Oma, varias veces – por alguna razón la gente no parecía muy interesada en comprarlo. Leí detalles sobre el sistema de direcciones de Japón, ahí de pie oliendo la cera, detalles que aún recuerdo muy vívidamente, y en los que pensé mucho en viajes muy posteriores a Kobe, a Osaka, a Kioto y a Tokio.

Cuando encontré este librito de Michaux en Casa tomada, después de mil años y un recuerdo muy anclado ahí dentro, me puse muy feliz. Es como si por fin, después de mucho tiempo, el libro (en otra versión) hubiera llegado por fin a mis manos, que tantas veces lo cortejaron en el Oma de mi adolescencia.

—-

Además de los libros, estaba el Café Oma (el verdadero – no la versión vulgar que armaron después en todas las esquinas). El primer sitio que recuerdo donde tostaran y molieran tanto café. Oscuro, con iluminación baja. Uno se sentaba ahí a comer un sandwich, a leer, a compartir un pie de chocolate helado (con brandy – cosa única en esa época – compartíamos con María Clara ese pie que nos descuadraba el presupuesto de almuerzos). Veía de lejos las mesas con los remanentes de los poetas, y al Salomón Kalmanovitz de entonces reunido con los intelectuales que citaba allá, ceñudo y serio. Allá entendí por primera vez qué diablos era un inaccesible, un conjunto de Vitali, una descomposición paradójica de la esfera, la jerarquía boreliana y la jerarquía proyectiva – balbuceos en el largo camino – que en la Bogotá de entonces sonaban a música de las esferas.

three overlapping voices

CECCO ANGIOLIERI – RIME

I

– Accorri accorri accorri, uom, a la strada!
– Che ha’, fi’ de la putta? – I’ son rubato.
– Chi t’ha rubato? – Una che par che rada
come rasoio, si m’ha netto lasciato.

– Or come non le davi de la spada?
– I’ dare’ anz’a me. – Or se’ ‘mpazzato?
– Non so che ‘l dà, così mi par che vada.
– Or t’avess’ella cieco, sciagurato!

– E vedi che ne pare a que’ che ‘l sanno?
– Di’ quel che tu mi rubi. – Or va con Dio,
ma anda pian, ch’i’ vo’ pianger lo danno,

ché ti diparti. – Con animo rio!
– Tu abbi ‘l danno con tutto ‘l malanno!
– Or chi m’ha morto? – E che diavol sacc’io?

russiangrammar:

The great Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin, often sketched out his characters in his rough drafts, along side their descriptions. This picture was taken from a rough draft for the second canto of possibly his finest work: “Eugene Onegin”.

Mais do que jogo de palavras

O que eu sinto eu não ajo. O que ajo não penso. O que penso não sinto. De que sei sou ignorante. Do que sinto não ignoro. Não me entendo e ajo come se me entendesse.

Clarice Lispector (Aprendendo a viver.)

arringtondedionyso:

from Andre Breton and Paul Eluard’s “32 Positions of Love” originally published in 1932. This edition was illustrated and privately printed by Arrington de Dionyso in 2011. 

nypl:

(Image above from the NYPL Digital Gallery.)

On this day in 1792, Percy Bysshe Shelley — enfant terrible of English Romanticism and husband of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley — was born in Sussex, England. 

Shelley was a hippie before hippies, a vegetarian before it became a fad, a soul-searching atheist, a free lover who left a small but deep trail of broken hearts, and one who cared acutely (though a bit naively, being born into landed gentry) for the working class during the cruel early years of the Industrial Revolution. And, as you can see above, he was an unrelenting doodler: spirited, haunting sketches rim the pages and margins of his many notebooks.

Next February, the NYPL, in collaboration with the Bodleian Library of Oxford, will mount an exhibition exploring his life and work entitled Shelley’s Ghost. Until then, we give you a leaf from an 1813 edition of his first major poem Queen Mab, marked with Shelley’s own revisions. 

Happy birthday, Bysshe! 

Visión (Pedro Poitevin)

Visión

Una navaja, un sobre y una carta,
un aguijón y un óvalo en el pecho,
la convulsión de un pez fuera del agua,
un hombre derrumbado sobre el lecho.

Una ventana, una mujer morena,
el filo de sus ojos tras el vidrio,
un tren a punto de partir, la escena
efímera de un rayo entre los lirios.

Una sonrisa, un sable entre las nubes,
la luna verdadera en la montaña,
la ráfaga del viento de la cumbre,
la hierba y el fulgor de la guadaña.

                                Pedro Poitevin

Sylvia Plath – Love Letter

(via catalinapordios

Not easy to state the change you made. If I’m alive now, then I was dead, Though, like a stone, unbothered by it, Staying put according to habit. You didn’t just tow me an inch, no— Nor leave me to set my small bald eye Skyward again, without hope, of course, Of apprehending blueness, or stars. That wasn’t it. I slept, say: a snake Masked among black rocks as a black rock In the white hiatus of winter— Like my neighbors, taking no pleasure In the million perfectly-chisled Cheeks alighting each moment to melt My cheeks of basalt. They turned to tears, Angels weeping over dull natures, But didn’t convince me. Those tears froze. Each dead head had a visor of ice. And I slept on like a bent finger. The first thing I was was sheer air And the locked drops rising in dew Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay Dense and expressionless round about. I didn’t know what to make of it. I shone, mice-scaled, and unfolded To pour myself out like a fluid Among bird feet and the stems of plants. I wasn’t fooled. I knew you at once. Tree and stone glittered, without shadows. My finger-length grew lucent as glass. I started to bud like a March twig: An arm and a leg, and arm, a leg. From stone to cloud, so I ascended. Now I resemble a sort of god Floating through the air in my soul-shift Pure as a pane of ice. It’s a gift.

)

El desdichado,, Aurélia (Nerval)

El poema El desdichado de Nerval me encantaba cuando estaba en el colegio. Fue también la época de la lectura de Aurélia – qué mejor comienzo que ese Le rêve est une seconde vie. Je n’ai pu percer sans frémir ces portes d’ivoire ou de corne qui nous séparent du monde invisible. Les premiers instants du sommeil sont l’image de la mort ; un engourdissement nébuleux saisit notre pensée, et nous ne pouvons déterminer l’instant précis où le moi, sous une autre forme, continue l’œuvre de l’existence… (El sueño es una segunda vida. No he podido cruzar sin temblar esas puertas de marfil o de cuerno que nos separan del mundo invisible. Los primeros instantes del sueño son la imagen de la muerte; un embotamiento nebulosa se apodera de nuestro pensamiento, y no podemos determinar el instante preciso en que el yo, bajo otra forma, continúa la obra de la existencia…)

A los 15 o 16 años, esas frases son poderosísimas. Leía y leía a Nerval, con sus sueños de oriente, con su búsqueda de algo no muy claramente definido, su Aurelia – con su temor y angustia.

El poema El desdichado (en francés, pero con el título original en español) era el complemento perfecto de la lectura de Aurélia:

El Desdichado

Je suis le Ténébreux, – le Veuf – l’Inconsolé,
Le prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie:
Ma seule étoile est morte, – et mon luth constellé
Porte le Soleil noir de la Mélancolie.
Dans la nuit du tombeau, toi qui m’as consolé,
Rends-moi le Pausilippe et la mer d’Italie,
La fleur qui plaisait tant à mon coeur désolé,
Et la treille où le pampre à la rose s’allie.
Suis-je Amour ou Phébus?… Lusignan ou Biron?
Mon front est rouge encor du baiser de la Reine;
J’ai rêvé dans la grotte où nage la Sirène…
Et j’ai deux fois vainqueur traversé l’Achéron:
Modulant tour à tour sur la lyre d’Orphée
Les soupirs de la sainte et les cris de la Fée.

Ballade des dames du temps jadis

Este poema de Villon me ha encantado desde hace tiempo, desde que estaba en el colegio. Por alguna razón, al leerlo en voz alta, aparece un ritmo que parece de puro rap. [¿Rap francés del siglo 15? 🙂 ] Villon transmite vitalidad, movimiento, crudeza, vida aventurera y abierta en un mundo peligroso, como lo era Francia entonces. Sencillamente me fascina.

—-

Dictes moy où, n’en quel pays,

Est Flora, la belle Rommaine,

Archipiada, ne Thaïs,

Qui fut sa cousine germaine;

Echo, parlant quand bruyt on maine

Dessus rivière ou sus estan,

Qui beaulté ot trop plus qu’humaine?

Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan?

Où est la très sage Helloïs,

Pour qui fut chastré, puis moyne

Pierre Esbaillart a Saint Denis?

Pour son amour ot cest essoyne.

Semblablement ou est la royne

Qui commanda que Buridan

Fust gecte en ung sac en Saine?

Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan?

La royne blanche comme lis,

Qui chantoit a voix de seraine;

Berte au grant pié, Bietris, Alis;

Haremburgis qui tint le Maine,

Et Jehanne, la bonne Lorraine,

Qu’Englois brulerent a Rouan;

Ou sont ilz, ou, Vierge souvraine?

Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan?

65 years

Yesterday night, I was listening (with rapture) to the Terezín/Theresienstadt CD I received on the mail yesterday. One of the composers, Ilse Weber, who was a writer of stories and songs for children in Prague before the war, composed four of the songs in the compilation while she was in the Theresienstadt camp. She went to join her husband with their son in Auschwitz (only her husband survived – he devoted part of the rest of his life to collecting his wife’s writings and songs). Listening to the beauty of her lullaby (Wiegala wiegala weier – click on the Ilse Weber link above to hear a rendering), or listening to Ade, Kamerad – a farewell song of two friends when one of them is about to go on the Polentransport, the train to Poland, left me airless.

Here is Todesfuge by Paul Celan, as found in Entartete Musik and with the translation from this blog with translations into English of many poems (I am following Gavin Plumley’s idea of posting Paul Celan – essentially, reblogging, as it were – the starkness of Celan’s words in the Todesfuge is irreplaceable):

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken sie abends
wir trinken sie mittags und morgens wir trinken sie nachts
wir trinken und trinken
wir schaufeln ein Grab in den Lüften da liegt man nicht eng
Ein Mann wohnt im Haus der spielt mit den Schlangen der schreibt
der schreibt wenn es dunkelt nach Deutschland dein goldenes Haar Margarete
er schreibt es und tritt vor das Haus und es blitzen die Sterne er pfeift seine Rüden herbei
er pfeift seine Juden hervor läßt schaufeln ein Grab in der Erde
er befiehlt uns spielt auf nun zum Tanz

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich morgens und mittags wir trinken dich abends
wir trinken und trinken
Ein Mann wohnt im Haus der spielt mit den Schlangen der schreibt
der schreibt wenn es dunkelt nach Deutschland dein goldenes Haar Margarete
Dein aschenes Haar Sulamith wir schaufeln ein Grab in den Lüften da liegt man nicht eng

Er ruft stecht tiefer ins Erdreich ihr einen ihr andern singet und spielt
er greift nach dem Eisen im Gurt er schwingts seine Augen sind blau
stecht tiefer die Spaten ihr einen ihr andern spielt weiter zum Tanz auf

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich mittags und morgens wir trinken dich abends
wir trinken und trinken
ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Sulamith er spielt mit den Schlangen
Er ruft spielt süßer den Tod der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
er ruft streicht dunkler die Geigen dann steigt ihr als Rauch in die Luft
dann habt ihr ein Grab in den Wolken da liegt man nicht eng

Schwarze Milch der Frühe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich mittags der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
wir trinken dich abends und morgens wir trinken und trinken
der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland sein Auge ist blau
er trifft dich mit bleierner Kugel er trifft dich genau
ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete
er hetzt seine Rüden auf uns er schenkt uns ein Grab in der Luft
er spielt mit den Schlangen und träumet der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland

dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Sulamith

Black milk of daybreak we drink it come evening
we drink it come midday come morning we drink it come night
we drink it and drink it
we spade out a grave in the air there it won’t feel so tight
A man lives at home who plays with the vipers he writes
he writes in the Teutonic nightfall
the gold of your hair Margarete
he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are aglitter he whistles his hounds out 
he whistles his Jews off has them spade out a grave in the ground
he orders us play up for the dance

Black milk of daybreak we drink you come night
we drink you come midday come morning we drink you come evening
we drink you and drink you
A man lives at home who plays with the vipers he writes
he writes in the Teutonic nightfall the gold of your hair Margarete
the ash of your hair Shulamith we spade out a grave in the air there it won’t feel so tight

He yells you there dig deeper and you there sing and play
He grabs the nightstick at his belt and swings it his eye has gone blue
You there dig deeper and you there play loud for the dance

Black milk of daybreak we drink you come night
We drink you come midday come morning we drink you come evening
We drink you and drink you
a man lives at home the gold of your hair Margarete
the ash of your hair Shulamith he plays with the vipers
he yells play sweeter for death Death is a German-born master
yells scrape the strings darker you’ll rise through the air like smoke
and have a grave in the clouds there it won’t feel so tight

Black milk of daybreak we drink you come night
we drink you come midday Death is a German-born master
We drink you come evening come morning we drink you and drink you
Death is a German-born master his eye has gone blue
He shoots with lead bullets he shoots you his aim is so true
a man lives at home the gold of your hair Margarete
he lets his hounds loose on us grants us a grave in the air
he plays with his vipers and dreams a dream Death is a German-born master

The gold of your hair Margarete
The ash of your hair Shulamith