Mayakovsky, Mandelstam and Barnes

Two interesting poetry events.

1. Whale & Star's recent publication of “Mandelstam: Modernist Archaist.” The book's editor, Kevin M. F. Platt, assembled new translations by notable contemporary poets combined with an exceptional selection of previous translations. You can buy it here.

2. Thomas tells me that one night in the winter of 1978 Clifford Barnes was holding fort at the White Horse Tavern, where from time to time Cliff lowered his voice, looked at one of his admirers in the eyes and delivered a bit of wisdom. He wielded his softness like a flamethrower and that annoyed Vladimir Mayakovsky, who was drinking quietly nearby. Mayakovsky told Cliff to shut up but the bard, not used to people like the Georgian, smirked, which cost him a beating.

A Sentimental Education

Sometimes I am asked about my influences or my education, and I sometimes ask others for the same. I am not sure what we expect to find. Causes and effects are usually separated by years and events; a bent here; a twist there; a fear, for instance, that reacts with an image or a song to make a new emotional compound and part of a personality. The stories we build to make sense of what happens or happened are fictions, always oversimplified and often misunderstood.

In 1978, Pablo and I had a sleepover and as part of the rituals we ate late, talked—mostly lied—about girls, and played records. I think Pablo had gotten the records from his father. Through the night Paco Ibañez, Silvio Rodriguez and Joan Manuel Serrat sang and we listened pretending to be more mature than we were; at fourteen we could still take ourselves seriously. At some point we played Serrat’s record devoted to the poems of Miguel Hernandez and laid on the floor looking up at the ceiling, in silence. Since then “Umbrío por la pena” has been an ongoing education.


UMBRIO POR LA PENA
Umbrío por la pena, casi bruno,

porque la pena tizna cuando estalla,

donde yo no me hallo no se halla

hombre más apenado que ninguno.

Sobre la pena duermo solo y uno,

pena es mi paz y pena mi batalla,

perro que ni me deja ni se calla,

siempre a su dueño fiel, pero importuno.

Cardos y penas llevo por corona,

cardos y penas siembran sus leopardos

y no me dejan bueno hueso alguno.

No podrá con la pena mi persona
rodeada de penas y de cardos:

¡cuánto penar para morirse uno!

°
Shadowed by sorrow, nearly black
because sorrow soots when it bursts,
where I am not, it is not
the most sorrowed man.

I sleep alone and one on the sorrow,
sorrow is my peace and sorrow my battle;
a dog that neither leaves nor lies quiet,
always faithful, but inopportune.

Thistles and pain I carry as a crown,
thistles and pain sow leopards
that do not leave a bone uncrushed.

Surrounded by sorrow and thistles
my body can bear no more.
So much sorrow only to die!

[In translating this poem I used Ted Genoways translation as a starting point.]

Unreasonable Pursuits: Moby-Dick

The reasonableness of most pursuits is arguable, especially pursuits carried, consciously or unconsciously, as affronts to reasonableness. In the arts, but not just in the arts, these reasonableness-challenging pursuits tend to lead far from certainty. The mighty and the ones who like to appear mighty or who don’t know any better, suggest trusting, an advise that has kept many in foolish voyages from which they never returned. The prudent and the cowards suggest retreating and the results of this advise are plain to see.

It is not easy to be a good judge of time and circumstance, which is what is called for here. The following are excerpts from contemporary reviews of Moby-Dick and from a note on Melville’s death (from www.melville.org, a useful website). I find it interesting to read these from a distance of 150 years, which we don’t (usually) have in our own pursuits.

The more careful, therefore, should he [Herman Melville] be to maintain the fame he so rapidly acquired, and not waste his strength on such purposeless and unequal doings as these rambling volumes about spermaceti whales. —London Literary Gazette, December 6, 1851

In all other aspects, the book is sad stuff, dull and dreary, or ridiculous. Mr. Melville's Quakers are the wretchedest dolts and drivellers, and his Mad Captain ... is a monstrous bore. —Charleston Southern Quarterly Review, January 1852

We have no intention of quoting any passages just now from Moby Dick…But if there are any of our readers who wish to find examples of bad rhetoric, involved syntax, stilted sentiment and incoherent English, we will take the liberty of recommending to them this precious volume of Mr. Melville's. —New York United States Magazine and Democratic Review, January 1852

It is strange how he persists—and has persisted ever since I knew him, and probably long before—in wondering to-and-fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous as the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other. If he were a religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us.— Nathaniel Hawthorne, Notebook Entry, November 20, 1856

The sum and substance of our fault-finding with Herman Melville is this. He has indulged himself in a trick of metaphysical and morbid meditations until he has almost perverted his fine mind from its healthy productive tendencies.—Fitz-James O’Brien: Our Authors and Authorship, Melville and Curtis. In Putnam’s Monthly Magazine (New York), April 1857

Herman Melville, one of the most original and virile of American literary men, died at his home on Twenty-sixth street, New York, a few days ago, at the age of 72. He had long been forgotten, and was no doubt unknown to the most of those who are reading the magazine literature and the novels of the day. Nevertheless, it is probable that no work of imagination more powerful and often poetic has been written by an American than Melville's romance of Moby Dick; or the Whale, published just 40 years ago […] Certainly it is hard to find a more wonderful book than this Moby Dick, and it ought to be read by this generation, amid whose feeble mental food, furnished by the small realists and fantasts of the day, it would appear as Hercules among the pygmies, or as Moby Dick himself among a school of minnows.—Springfield, Massachusetts Republican, October 4, 1891