A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews
A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews
"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
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Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Poem of the Day: Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Manche freilich müssen drunten sterben,
Many, to be sure, must die down there
Wo die schweren Ruder der Schiffe streifen,
where the heavy oars of the ship scrape,
Andre wohnen bei dem Steuer droben,
Others dwell above at the helm
Kennen Vogelflug und die Länder der Sterne.
and know the flight of birds and the realms of the stars.
Manche liegen immer mit schweren Gliedern
Many lie forever with heavy limbs
Bei den Wurzeln des verworrenen Lebens,
at the roots of obscure life,
Andern sind die Stühle gerichtet
others have chairs placed for them
Bei den Sibyllen, den Königinnen,
with the Sibyls, the queens,
Und da sitzen sie wie zu Hause,
and they sit there as if at home,
Leichten Hauptes und leichter Hände.
with light heads and light hands.
Doch ein Schatten fällt von jenen Leben
Still, a shadow falls from those other lives
In die anderen Leben hinüber,
across these lives,
Und die leichten sind an die schweren
and the light and the heavy
Wie an Luft und Erde gebunden:
are bound together as to the air and the earth:
Ganz vergessener Völker Müdigkeiten
The weariness of quite forgotten people
Kann ich nicht abtun von meinen Lidern,
I can't shut away with my eyelids
Noch weghalten von der erschrockenen Seele
nor hold off from my horrified soul
Stummes Niederfallen ferne Sterne.
the silent fall of distant stars.
Viele Geschicke weben neben dem meinen,
Many fates are woven next to my own,
Durcheinander spielt sie alle das Dasein,
existence mixes them all up together,
Und mein Teil is mehr als dieses Lebens
and my share is more than this life's
Schlanke Flamme oder schmale Leier.
slender flame or thin lyre.
--Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Hofmannsthal is now probably best known to opera buffs as the librettist for Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Elektra and other opera. But he was a fine poet whose poems have a haunting melancholy about them, a kind of Austrian Weltschmerz. Even his librettos have something of this -- if you know the Strauss operas, think of the Marschallin's meditation on time and aging, Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding, and Ariadne's invocation of death, Es gibt ein Reich.
