Beers & Books CCLV – Dafydd ap Gwilym

Clicking the label
Dafydd ap Gwilym
soon you will agree with me:
There's no bard like him.

Dafydd ap Gwilym (c. 1315/1320 – c. 1350/1370)

Beers & Books CCLIV – Petrarca's Love Poems

The most beautiful love poems

Francesco Petrarca (* 20. Juli 1304 in Arezzo; † 19. Juli 1374 in Arquà)

Beers & Books CCXLIX – Tanka and Haiku

Japanese Seasons
Tanka and Haiku
from thirteen
centuries

Beers & Books CCXLVI – Oliver Herford

"Crime, Wickedness, Villany, Vice,
And Sin only misery bring;
If you want to be Happy and Nice,
Be good and all that sort of thing."

Oliver Herford (2 December 1860 – 5 July 1935) 

Ils ont voté

Léo Ferré (24 August 1916 – 14 July 1993)

250th anniversary ...

... of him who stubbed virgin soil  and planted a blue flower.  

Born May 2nd, 1772 as Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg in Oberwiederstedt Manor / Harz mountains, when choosing his pseudonym he probably bethought himself of the name his ancestors in Großenrode had kept until the sons of Bernhard de Novalis decided to take Hardenberg as their family name. And 'stubbing virgin soil' (which is the meaning of Novalis) he intended to do, this Novalis who when in May 1789 meeting Gottfried August Bürger, felt taken with this ardent advocate of a folksy poetry, but distanced himself, after he had met the Bürger-critical Friedrich von Schiller. 'Everything must be poetic', henceforth is his maxim. Less romantic contemporaries shrug off his work as fustian, others (glorifying him) explain his desire for death (Hymns to the Night) with his not getting over the death of his great love (Sophie von Kühn); but Novalis arguably did more than inventing the symbol of romanticism – the Blue Flower dreamt up by the protagonist in his fragmental novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen: Studies of law and mining, arts, science, love: the 'dreamer' , who in view of an accelerating celerity commended his contemporaries to exercise slowness, was eager for knowledge, was concerned about many things. Often disputed. Self-critical, too. And he is not given as much time as Goethe. Death comes quickly. March 25th, 1801 Novalis dies, not even 29 years old. Probably he got infected, while tending his from phtisis suffering friend Friedrich. What remains from Novalis? Much more than Pollen (Blüthenstaub)

Rather be it Shakespeare

On Shakespeare's 458th birthday and
the 406th anniversary of either his death
and the death of Cervantes
just to wish a very special literary evening.

It's also World Book Day?

Well, yes. But isn't every day a day of the book?

Comparing the results of my recent attempts to write some sonnets myself with what I am rereading these days, I came to the conclusion, in order not to put anyone off the realm of poetry, to post rather one from the Master of Avondale.

CIII
Alack what poverty my muse brings forth,
That having such a scope to show her pride,
The argument all bare is of more worth
Than when it hath my added praise beside.
O blame me not if I no more can write!
Look in your glass and there appears a face,
That over-goes my blunt invention quite,
Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.
Were it not sinful then striving to mend,
To mar the subject that before was well?
For to no other my verses tend,
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell.
       And more, much more than in my verse can sit,
       Your own glass shows you, when you look in it.

To those born later

To those born later

Indeed I live in dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.

Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
And he who walks calmly across the street,
Is he not out of reach of his friends
In trouble?

It is true: I earn my living
But, believe me, it is only an accident.
Nothing that I do entitles me to eat my fill.
By chance I was spared. (If my luck leaves me
I am lost.)

They tell me: eat and drink. Be glad you have it!
But how can I eat and drink
When my food is snatched from the hungry
And my glass of water belongs to the thirsty?
And yet I eat and drink.

I would gladly be wise.
The old books tell us what wisdom is:
Avoid the strife of the world
Live out your little time
Fearing no one
Using no violence
Returning good for evil --
Not fulfillment of desire but forgetfulness
Passes for wisdom.
I can do none of this:
Indeed I live in dark ages!

2.

I came to the cities in a time of disorder
When hunger ruled.
I came among men in a time of uprising
And I revolted with them.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

I ate my food between massacres.
The shadow of murder lay upon my sleep.
And when I loved, I loved with indifference.
I looked upon nature with impatience.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

In my time streets led to the quicksand.
Speech betrayed me to the slaughterer.
There was little I could do. But without me
The rulers would have been more secure. This was my hope.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

3.

You, who shall emerge from the flood
In which we are sinking,
Think --
When you speak of our weaknesses,
Also of the dark time
That brought them forth.

For we went,changing our country more often than our shoes.
In the class war, despairing
When there was only injustice and no resistance.

For we knew only too well:
Even the hatred of squalor
Makes the brow grow stern.
Even anger against injustice
Makes the voice grow harsh. Alas, we
Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness
Could not ourselves be kind.

But you, when at last it comes to pass
That man does help his fellow man,
Do not judge us
Too harshly.

An die Nachgeborenen

1

Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten!

Das arglose Wort ist töricht. Eine glatte Stirn
Deutet auf Unempfindlichkeit hin. Der Lachende
Hat die furchtbare Nachricht
Nur noch nicht empfangen.

Was sind das für Zeiten, wo
Ein Gespräch über Bäume fast ein Verbrechen ist
Weil es ein Schweigen über so viele Untaten einschließt!
Der dort ruhig über die Straße geht
Ist wohl nicht mehr erreichbar für seine Freunde
Die in Not sind?

Es ist wahr: ich verdiene noch meinen Unterhalt
Aber glaubt mir: das ist nur ein Zufall. Nichts
Von dem, was ich tue, berechtigt mich dazu, mich satt zu essen.
Zufällig bin ich verschont. (Wenn mein Glück aussetzt
Bin ich verloren.)

Man sagt mir: iß und trink du! Sei froh, daß du hast!
Aber wie kann ich essen und trinken, wenn
Ich es dem Hungernden entreiße, was ich esse, und
Mein Glas Wasser einem Verdurstenden fehlt?
Und doch esse und trinke ich.

Ich wäre gerne auch weise
In den alten Büchern steht, was weise ist:
Sich aus dem Streit der Welt halten und die kurze Zeit
Ohne Furcht verbringen
Auch ohne Gewalt auskommen
Böses mit Gutem vergelten
Seine Wünsche nicht erfüllen, sondern vergessen
Gilt für weise.
Alles das kann ich nicht:
Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten!

                                   2

In die Städte kam ich zu der Zeit der Unordnung
Als da Hunger herrschte.
Unter die Menschen kam ich zu der Zeit des Aufruhrs
Und ich empörte mich mit ihnen.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.

Mein Essen aß ich zwischen den Schlachten
Schlafen legt ich mich unter die Mörder
Der Liebe pflegte ich achtlos
Und die Natur sah ich ohne Geduld.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.

Die Straßen führten in den Sumpf zu meiner Zeit
Die Sprache verriet mich dem Schlächter
Ich vermochte nur wenig. Aber die Herrschenden
Saßen ohne mich sicherer, das hoffte ich.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.

Die Kräfte waren gering. Das Ziel
Lag in großer Ferne
Es war deutlich sichtbar, wenn auch für mich
Kaum zu erreichen.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.

                             3

Ihr, die ihr auftauchen werdet aus der Flut
In der wir untergegangen sind
Gedenkt
Wenn ihr von unseren Schwächen sprecht
Auch der finsteren Zeit
Der ihr entronnen seid.

Gingen wir doch, öfter als die Schuhe die Länder wechselnd
Durch die Kriege der Klassen, verzweifelt
Wenn da nur Unrecht war und keine Empörung.

Dabei wissen wir ja:
Auch der Haß gegen die Niedrigkeit
Verzerrt die Züge.
Auch der Zorn über das Unrecht
Macht die Stimme heiser. Ach, wir
Die wir den Boden bereiten wollten für Freundlichkeit
Konnten selber nicht freundlich sein.

Ihr aber, wenn es soweit sein wird
Daß der Mensch dem Menschen ein Helfer ist
Gedenkt unsrer
Mit Nachsicht.

Bertold Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956)

The Moonlight is speechless ...

... and so am I, almost, on the first anniversary of Claude's death, which is why I let her speak.
She sent me this poem in December 2018.



THE MOONLIGHT IS SPEECHLESS...
 
She worked hard at being able
to think THINK instead of PENSER
to write a flawless letter to England as well as to France
to add Shelley to Lamartine
to exude Gallic charm mixed with British romanticism
 
she studied books and dictionaries
she travelled far and she lived everywhere
she met dignitaries and the people next door
she reached French and English fluency
in her dreams, tears and laughter
 
and when she wore this two-colour dress with elegance
she discovered
that the heart has no language, no culture of its own
 
The moonlight is speechless...
stars in one's eyes mean more than "Je t'aime, beloved"
and two clasped hands across a table
across a warm sea of silence
can tear down
better than a thousand well-chosen words
the tower of babel
one erects every day in one's soul.
 
CPG     (1970)

Thank you for everyting, Claude. De tout coeur.

Beers & Books CXCII – Giulio Stocchi

Con questa poesia della tua gloriosa penna in mente
alzo il mio bicchiere, caro vecchio amico.
*
With this poem from your glorious pen in mind
I raise my glass, dear old friend.

* * *

L’amico che è morto
di notte mi torna
a parlare
Mi chiede notizie
del mondo
che ha dovuto
abbandonare
Ascolta ciò che dico
Poi scuote la testa
sospira
e scompar
*
The friend who died
comes back to me at night
to speak
He asks me for news
Of the world
that he had to
abandon
He listens to what I say
Then he shakes his head
sighs
and disappears

Giulio Stocchi (20 January 1944 – April 2019)

Beers & Book CXCI – Nâzım Hikmet

However and wherever we are,
we must live as if we will never die.

Nâzım Hikmet (15 January 1902 – 3 June 1963)

In the Fog*

Strange, to wander in the fog!
Alone each bush and stone,
No tree does see the other,
Each is alone.

[...]

Strange, to wander in the fog!
Life is loneliness.
No man knows the other,
Each is alone.

 Hermann Hesse, November 1905

* For a change, but the first and fourth stanza, translated by me.

Beers & Books CXLV – Dylan Thomas

"Join the army and see the next world."

Dylan Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953)

Beers & Books CXXVII – Mary Oliver

It's very important
to write things down instantly,
or you can lose the way
you were thinking out a line.
I have a rule
that if I wake up at 3 in the morning
and think of something, I write it down.
I can't wait until morning - it'll be gone.

Mary Oliver (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019)

Inexpensive Progress

Encase your legs in nylons,
Bestride your hills with pylons
  O age without a soul;
Away with gentle willows
And all the elmy billows
  That through your valleys roll.

Let's say goodbye to hedges
And roads with grassy edges
  And winding country lanes;
Let all things travel faster
Where motor-car is master
  Till only Speed remains.

Destroy the ancient inn-signs
But strew the roads with tin signs
  'Keep Left,' 'M4,' 'Keep Out!'
Command, instruction, warning,
Repetitive adorning
  The rockeried roundabout;

For every raw obscenity
Must have its small 'amenity,'
  Its patch of shaven green,
And hoardings look a wonder
In banks of floribunda
  With floodlights in between.

Leave no old village standing
Which could provide a landing
  For aeroplanes to roar,
But spare such cheap defacements
As huts with shattered casements
  Unlived-in since the war.

Let no provincial High Street
Which might be your or my street
  Look as it used to do,
But let the chain stores place here
Their miles of black glass facia
  And traffic thunder through.

And if there is some scenery,
Some unpretentious greenery,
  Surviving anywhere,
It does not need protecting
For soon we'll be erecting
  A Power Station there.

When all our roads are lighted
By concrete monsters sited
  Like gallows overhead,
Bathed in the yellow vomit
Each monster belches from it,
  We'll know that we are dead.

John Betjeman (28 August 1906 – 19 May 1984)

Doors ... and the Great Wall of China

Door is an insidious thing… I have thought about it time and again.

It is only for the possible – or what is more, the positive – existence of a door that one keeps on looking around a walled area… If there were no doors, walls could utterly maintain and stand by the significance of the impasse, to wit the constraint, evermore. Still, if so, every wall could be a decisively negative certitude and knew well what to do confronting everyone…

If there were no doors, each wall could, without a hitch, resound with the inscription suspended by Dante at the entrance to hell; but, regrettably, one has to confess that doors have deprived them of so impeccable and sheer a sense.
***
More than that, a door is a full-blooded parasite.

Its personality is totally subject to that of wall; still one should suspect this point, in that though only walls can justify the existence of doors, they cannot sustain the finality and their arrant emphaticness I referred to before, in the presence of doors. But, there would not be after all anything more useless and ludicrous than a door if there were no walls. However I do not know a thing about painting, I can easily paint such a door:

What is more ludicrous than a door that – separate and independent from a wall – tries to have a personality?

Yet, a door that is not constructed in any wall has the astounding potentiality of provoking thought…

I have given my mind to such a door; and sometimes it has made my mind think about borders and passageways of borders, with no change in its form necessarily.

Actually, a free-standing door that can be nothing, is a good passageway for thinking, through which one can find way to many realms.
***
The necessity of walls is felt soon by observing a door. I ask if we sense accordingly the necessity of doors by observing a wall.

I do not suppose so. It may be so, but not that much to me, at least. I find walls more logical than doors, and believe that doors are vacuous hopes: they repudiate the character of walls when opened, and their ((own's)) when closed.

A wall is simply not more than an obstruction if there is no door in it; but nothing betrays its own entity as a door that bears a heavy lock… Maybe that is the reason why we cherish Roman and Greek castles more than old fortresses, and maybe that is the reason why we feel relieved and restful by recalling those sumptuous and colonnaded castles; and feel dubious and anxious by remembering those stealthy citadels; maybe... I do not know...

One more point: the uncertainty that makes us to construct walls…

The lofty walls before which we feel a dire need for doors…

And the doors which should be secure and specifically invulnerable, and have heavy locks...

As though life would be impossible but among walls and doors, but among this hurly-burly, this ambivalence, this opening, closing, and reopening:

Building a wall,
Constructing a door in it,
And
Closing the door!

Is it not a laughingstock? Why, yes. On the whole, it is hilarious.
***
The Great Wall of China has been a matter of discussion at times – and each time with a different outlook. It is said that the Great Wall of China was founded to fortify the country against the invading northern tribes.

It was an interesting point, having had one third of a Chinese generation victimized; let us say, a whole generation… because the graveness of such a matter is not weighed through the number of its victims.

The truth is that what immolated an innumerable group of people was not the main surmise of the theory i.e. the possible invasion.

It cannot be said that only the general principles of this theory are modified here; the blind spot of the theory is that the constructors of the wall (not indeed their commanders) did not construct a door in that wall! As a result, the main catastrophe they wanted to ward off beforehand by wall-constructing, changed readily and came forth more unsparingly in the same form and structure they had walled! Ah! And this is, I think, the destiny of all those who overlook the importance of doors. The northern did not invade but the southern did not find any door to escape through.

I would like to confess that I was ungrateful to doors in the beginning of this discourse.
In the history we human beings make, nothing is more remedial to us than a door to escape through.

Doors are essential; even a door constructed in no wall…

In this world – of no validity – we live in, doors are more requisite than everything else, even the Great Wall of China…


Ahmad Shamlou (12 December 1925 – 23 July 2000)
Tr. by Mohammad Forough

Beers & Books LXXXIX – Federico García Lorca

The day we stop resisting our instincts,
we'll have learned how to live.

Federico García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936)

At The Mid Hour Of Night

At the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly
To the lone valley we loved, when life shone warm in thine eye;
And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions of air
To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me there
And tell me our love is remember'd even in the sky!
Then I sing the wild song it was once rapture to hear
When our voices, commingly, breathed like one on the ear;
And as Echo far off through the vale my sad orison rolls, I think,
O my Love! 'tis thy voice, from the Kingdom of Souls
Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear.

Thomas Moore (28 May 1779 – 25 February 1852)

At the Mid Hour of Night

At the mid hour of night, when stars are weeping, I fly
To the lone valley we loved, when life shone warm in thine eye;
And I think oft, if spirits can steal from the regions of air
To revisit past scenes of delight, thou wilt come to me there
And tell me our love is remember'd even in the sky!
Then I sing the wild song 'twas once such pleasure to hear
When our voices, commingly, breathed like one on the ear;
And as Echo far off through the vale my said orison rolls,
I think, O my Love! 'tis thy voice, from the Kingdom of Souls
Faintly answering still the notes that once were so dear.

Thomas Moore (28 May 1779 – 25 February 1852)

Beers & Books LXX – Seamus Heaney

"I've always associated the moment of writing
with a moment of lift, of joy,
of unexpected reward."

North (1975), Station Island (1984),
The Government of the Tongue (1986),
The Redress of Poetry (1995),
The Spirit Level (1996),
The Blackbird of Glanmore (Poems 1965 – 2006)

 Seamus Heaney (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013)