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la vie viennoise

My friends in Austria wonder why I don't much like to speak English anymore. Not in its current bastardised and crude form.

Here's the missing link..

I've rarely heard such awful readings of fine poetry in my life. Of all the female voices only Laura's reading of Gerard Manley Hopkins' Spring and Fall would have got you out of high school in Canada in the late eighties.

After suffering through the female readings, I had no stomach left for the men at all.

It makes me laugh that a certain Google Adwords expert is praised as a fine speaker in English - he sent me an audio CD to promote his products (the guide is not bad) - it's like listening to a bad radio commercial promoting AmWay. Hey, that's his other life.

His speaking was dire enough, I almost didn't buy the book.

It seems that nobody in America has any idea what good speaking public or private - sounds like anymore.

Anyway, that's why I don't like speaking English much anymore, apart with literarily inclined Brits. It used to be that Aussies sounded rough around the edges, but next to the Americans commercial whinings - even an Australian voice is beginning to take on the characteristics of a nightingale.

Does anybody have a list of some very fine free readings of poetry in English online?

French, Russian and German would be fine too.

speaking of molecular biology and reincarnation
with an intelligent and lovely scientist, there
is another life after this one she insists, dances
another one stoned and impossibly beautiful
slender waist, pushing bosom, shoulders round
features aquiline and fine, skin like cream.

....

if a scientist believes not in the the chemistry of existence
but in the holy spirit, reincarnation and destiny
what is left for the hewer of words or the drawer of sentiment
to believe in but the stoned and impossibly beautiful?

and so we shall believe and live to see another sunrise
and forget time and tomorrows and remember that these days
and nights are ours and ungone belong to us, our small sliver
of the universe to see and to live as we once kissed.

The taste of Anna and red wine.
So lovely to drink and drink.
Somehow without her sweet nectar
the wine is not so fine.

Also ohne Anna und ohne Wein
Muss Mann manchmal leben.

No Jane Austen heroines for me
all prose and no poetry,
reason and norm insistent
in every dawn and
a faultless sense of society,
infallible propriety.
I'll dally to ventilate
the tight sphincter which cramps
her every breath
in hope to release the emotions
stifled so long below.
Hopeless though, these women -
function of their most intimate organs
governed so strongly from the head
and not the heart. One pure breath
of unfiltered emotion, more, sadly
than six months of stifling devotion.

John Cassavetes on creativity:

you have to fight every day to stop censoring yourself. and you never have anyone else to blame when you do. what happens to artists is that it's not that somebody's standing in their way, it's that their own selves are standing in their way. the compromise really isn't how or what you do, the techniques you use, or even the content, but really the compromise is beginning to feel a lack of confidence in your innermost thoughts. and if you don't put these innermost thoughts on the screen then you are looking down on not only your audience but the people you work with, and that's what makes so many people working out there unhappy. these innermost thoughts become less and less a part of you and once you lose them then you don't have anything else.

Just be oneself, is the contemporary mantra. An impossibility. The civilised man or woman is never him or herself, but a projection of a conceptualised self. Ask someone about their sexual fantasies. Expect a real answer. Usually not.

The conceptualisation of self can happen at a higher or lower level depending on self-awareness and sense of society's own filters and behavioural models.

So how much of that interior world do we share with others, how much of it do we allow to flow through ourselves? Ultimately, that may be the question that Cassavates may be asking. Something to note is the difficulty many great artists have with socialisation.

To take some a surprising and Christian one, Soren Kierkegard - despite private fortune and connections - was a terrible social anomoly and unable to live a normal sentimental life. Lev Tolstoi was a total outrage until his great fame, running around mowing fields with peasants and running crackpot peasant literacy programs. And that's not to discuss, individuals like French poet Rimbaud who stopped writing at 19 to adventure through Africa, followed later by the articulate and dangeourous prince of clouds, Céline. (At least unlike Rimbaud, Céline managed to come back on his own two feet and not in a box.)

On the other hand, there are men like Henri de Stendhal and Pierre de Ronsard who lived civilised and mondain lives as diplomats, while beginning the oeuvre which will live on forever.

These latter two are an argument to make the battleground internal. Not external.

Compromise with the forms and appearances of society and make war on its corruption and hypocrisy from within.

But how then not to mute the internal voice under the damping of convention?

stone steps

the comfort of a sixteen-century house.
life after war, health after disease
and plenty after famine.
death in bed as grandparents.

the courtyard

in the darkness, my bicycle gleams.
a small golden ribbon still flutters
on the back stays, reminder that once
what mattered most a radiant smile

the street

from this one, who writes now,
bereaved of ribbons and dinners
and your soft touch in the night
parting late into the unknown.

the air

city gusts buffet dead sentiment
streetlights force the eyes to see.
cobblestones clatter, voices rattle
discordant medley of saturday nights.

the park

somewhere here you part into
pointless divertissement, satisfied
your best was done. comforted
by friends. yet ever the question.

arrival

the golden ribbon still flutters
with the wonder of unearned love.

more than a few drunken words
less than random infidelity
silence deep into the winter night
rains acid on my stainless heart

armies gather, generals scheme
africans starve, legions offshored
terrorists forged, unpaid mortgages
our souls vagaries not even news

but you see them, loud and high
a tsunami of emotion breaking
into timeless centuries in your steps
in these strophes of mourning

and i thank you for this. for one day
you and i really exist. and i wonder
why it is we cannot pass paradise
and in silence collect our bliss.

31.I.2004, toronto

seductive the sun
wherever she wandered,
followed wrack and ruin,
light to dark, the sky ever dim.

immune to time, she laughed
and passed the glade once more
hoping for more than is given
on this earth to man or woman.

but gods mate no longer with mortals,
no zeus or apollo, no olympia beyond
the horizon, instead another city
more cafes and bars and empty talk

loved by many but keeping none,
the fragile self hardens and wears thin,
sudden the light not so bright,
the love not so fierce, desire inane.

i was in the national library today collecting the books that astrid and i had ordered up for me last week. they included two editions of geschichte der o (pauline reagé) for anna-friend (in contrast to anna-lapin), and a book of ingeborg bachmann's poetry in translation and a translation of her stories the winding road.

one of the first things that astrid spoke to me about was a woman poet from klagenfurt, her home town. i had never heard of her.

but my first real look at bachmann's verse was an eye opener. strong stuff all of it. the aesthetic encounters the personal encounters hard language. none of the caterwauling of an anna akhmatova for stern bachmann.

with the time i spent in advertising and my current dark mood, i was especially taken with a very short poem called reklame - advertisement:

Reklame

Wohin aber gehen wir
ohne sorge sei ohne sorge
wenn es dunkel und wenn es kalt wird
sei ohne sorge
aber
mit musik
was sollen wir tun
heiter und mit musik
und denken
heiter
angesichts eines Endes
mit musik
und wohin tragen wir
am besten
unsre Fragen und den Schauer aller Jahre
in die Traumwäscherei ohne sorge sei ohne sorge
was aber geschieht
am besten
wenn Totenstille
eintritt

the play is between the poet's personal voice and the washing commercial which plays in the background and infiltrates her consciousness. the poet's voice is in oblique text and the washing commercial in italics. the symphonic dissonance between the gay jingle of advertising and the hard reality of daily life strikes one hard here.

as a sometimes poet who has indeed not only listened to washing commercials, but made them, i have a great sympathy for bachmann's interrupted thought processes. sadly these days so does every other consumer/soul in the western world and most of the rest of the planet.

i will try to post a translation to this poem later as i can't seem to find one on the net, let alone a good one.

perhaps astrid might have a go at it? in which case i'll tidy up.

two other lines overwhelmed me. i first caught sight of them as just a fragment before seeing the larger whole.

Nebelland hab ich gesehen,
Nebelherz hab ich gegessen.

this may be roughly translated as:

the fog land have i seen the fog heart have i eaten.

but really english fails us here. there is no worthy equivalent to nebelland. perhaps misty moors. distant duns. no. nein. nought.

those two strong lines are part of a longer poem entitled "nebelland" or "into the fog". well worth looking up, as it is too long to reproduce here.

as you can see, i had the good fortune of reading from a facing translation. ingeborg bachmann's poems. finally another good reason to learn german, some very good poetry. written by a young woman from klagenfurt.

something about those carinthian women. strange dark artists. carinthia is beautiful, the mountains and the lakes. what are they so despondent about? is it in the water? i drank my share this summer.

on a lighter note, i highly recommend joining the national library for anyone of scholarly or literary bent who happens to be sejouring in vienna. for about ten euros a year, you have access to a fabulous collection (rather strong on german language resources and things austrian, but there's lots leftover for the merely trilingual) and a wonderful reading room look over the city garden. it is a serious environment where one finds people who take writers and words and books very seriously indeed.

very inspiring for any kind of a writer, i am certain. i can see why astrid likes it here.

interesting night, last saturday. astrid and i went out again after her return from klagenfurt. first café dieglass. one of her favorites although i find it very formal and a little bit stuffy. shared a meal which was actually ample for two. talked and talked. then we moved onto another even more conservative bar called planters. kind of pickup joint for mid-level bankers/business types 27 to 40. the kind of place you'd never catch me dead in.

but with astrid it was alright. we just sat in our corner and talked about relationships, love and physical attraction.

astrid seems to like these grown-up places. if she decides to carry on in the theatre world, she'd do well to habituate herself to another life. but she does frequent alt wien, as well. as she admits, she'd like to be a theatre administrator and not an actual metteur en scène in any case.

she'd read the poem. she was quite categoric that the girl in it has nothing to do with her. i disagree about the nothing part, but do agree that it is not entirely here. when i emailed her to have a look at it, i'd warned her that it was only partly based on her.

but she insists emphatically that she is very realistic about life and doesn't have any illusions. i hope that's not true. twenty-two is a little bit early to be shedding the rose-coloured glasses.

on the other hand i've been out with her when she was said she is very romantic. certainly true. but when the romantic side doesn't follow her script, she is most discontent.

what can i say, astrid is the first for romantic realism... a new artistic movement and genre. nice to have someone care so much about poem. and i had begun to think writing poetry was a waste of time (cf. anna).

a big loss is that she asked me to take one of the photos down from her gallery. in my opinion, the nicest one. i acceded to the request but will try replace it with something else.

by the time three thirty am rolled around, i had had enough. but astrid delightful as she is, is never at a loss for words. and she likes the last word. at four in the morning, i'm inclined to give it away.