LCJ Author Corner Archives - Page 12 of 16

Text Festival at the MET in Bury: Poetry, Art, and Latte

First of all, I have a fair bit of Scorpio in me, astrologically speaking, and so this year I have been creating “Freudian” or otherwise weirdly coincidental situations for my Piscean friends. In one of these, I saw myself presenting a postcard with two birds to a friend who is soon to get married – totally forgetting, as a matter of fact, that his surname was Bird. And just yesterday I was meeting my friend Adrian to go to the poetry readings at the Bury Met, a part of Text Festival – and we both turned up wearing something green. Maybe there is nothing strange about these coincidents at all. Maybe. Or maybe not.

I am certainly grateful to Adrian for inviting me: Bury, like Heaton Park, is among the places in Greater Manchester that I never visited, in spite of living nearby for a long time. I considered going back and taking some pictures today, but after a walk in Bury streets and a short journey through Manchester’s Northern Quarter, also meeting Kate The Machizzle and Carol Batton (see the image above), I, to paraphrase Ringo Starr, had blisters on my toes.

What will never stop surprising me about these lovely provincial towns is the fact that you are sometimes almost advised against going there, let alone staying to live. Bury has always been described to me as a “hole”, and a lady I studied with at the University of Manchester finally left Bury for Altrincham a couple of years ago, to her great delight. But just for the record, this is the latte I was served yesterday at the Automatic cafe, next to the Bury MET, and upon my word this was the first instance of latte art in my nearly 6 years in Greater Manchester. And I do love and very often drink latte, so it isn’t like I’m much behind the latte art developments. Here you go.

Adrian took to prosaically and very cleverly reflect on the readings in his post The Tale of Two Carols (which title is a play on words by itself, as you may notice). Indeed, in a magic twist (it must have something to do with all this water signs thing), in the matter of days we were greeted, first, by the news of Carol Ann Duffy being appointed the new poet laureate; and then by the reading by Carol Watts. Adrian uttered what we both agreed upon while sipping on beverages at Manchester’s Centro, having come back from Bury. The problem is always about the genres and movements that often collide but never reconcile. Even if totally devoid of any political content, poetry – or literature, or art as a whole – often turns into a battleground of ideologies, in the broadest sense of the word, and thus falls prey to demagogy and factional politics. This segregation and sequestration come at the expense of progressive movement, but who needs progress, anyway? Modern “traditionalist” poetry denies the avant-garde poetry; the avant-garde poetry will denounce the traditional; the funny thing will be, of course, that both to one extent or another will be drawing inspiration from Dadaist or Surrealist legacy, maybe Rimbaud, and invariably using the same language, as the other. The dispute boils down to the form and the content, but very rarely does it take the language further in its development. When I hear someone Russian exulting that we write and speak the language of Pushkin and Dostoevsky, I cringe: both authors died in the 19th c. It should rather be a matter of great sadness that two centuries later we haven’t moved forward much. We should by all means seek to reproduce the impact of their writings for our age, but we should be doing so by reinventing the language, which is precisely what Pushkin did in his lifetime.

As for me, I narrated my thoughts in the fashion that most became the occasion, and here is yet another Bury Poem (uncommissioned, of course).

Centaur with a sting
I travel through
People and places
Leaving my mark
As my verses
So versatile is this life
That it would be sad
To always be sat
In one place
With nowhere to go
So with ingenious help
From one Latin rule
“Versatile” becomes “vertical”
And every stanza you write
Plunges deeper below the fold
Descends to the page’s bottom
Poets and artists sometimes
Live in Ramsbottom
Salford and Bury
Rather than London or Rome
In places like these
Poetry died and is buried
Under the sun in the marketplace
On the tram in the playground
On the spot where someone said
What – ever is so poetic becomes
Also tragic and doomed
And stanzas stretch into prose
Covering burial grounds
It’s not long before
Poetry goes back to Chaos
Where language abandons the tongue
Whoever they are
Poets are Scorpio Rising
Buried below the fold
Cherished for all the wrong reasons
Marking their way with the leaves
Of chrome yellow paper
And notebooks with the scribbles
Vertical or horizontal
Rising forever in verses…

The portrait of Carol Ann Duffy is courtesy of her website.

The Act of Smoking, and A YouTube Trouble

A rather unpleasant update as per 13 Dec 2008:

I have just found out that the English version of the video which was in this post has been taken down on YouTube for “the violation of Community Guidelines”. Here is the screen grab with the message:

Interestingly, clicking on any of the hyperlinks takes me to precisely the same page telling me about the violation of guidelines. I am expected to acknowledge it, but I cannot acknowledge something when I don’t know what it is. It never occurred to me to save YouTube Community Guidelines to a file, and when I google “youtube community guidelines” and click on the relevant link, I once again see the violation message. I am happy to acknowledge my fault, if there is any indeed, but I need to understand exactly what I did wrong. Unfortunately, YouTube sends me the message about guidelines’ violation, but it doesn’t offer me an option to communicate with them, to find out what was wrong. The video in question is my original work, it is my poem translated into English by myself. The video does use other artists’ images (who are all credited), to illustrate the idea, but over two years ago I quoted an extract from Adrian Darmon’s interview with Andy Warhol, in which the subject of plagiarism was briefly discussed:

AD: Where do you find yourself vis-a-vis Picasso?
AW: He’s dead, and I’m in his place. On the artistic level, I think I’ll be a milestone.
AD: Do you take yourself seriously?
AW: I’m doing things seriously, with aesthetic taste.
AD: And without plagiarism?
AW: I don’t understand the meaning of your question. In any case, the artists are inspired by the works of others.

To sum it up, another quote, taken from Slavoj Zizek’s book; this is what Fidel Castro said to Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban crisis: “You may be able to convince me that I am wrong, but you can’t tell me what I am wrong without convincing me”. For your reference, here is the English file uploaded to Google Videos:

//www.youtube.com/get_player

22 Nov 2008

Yesterday René Magritte, the Belgian surrealist painter, turned 110. I’ll start by giving the links to a few of Magritte places online: René Magritte Museum and Magritte Foundation.

I cannot say I ever took serious interest in pin-up art, but back in 2003/2004 I had a CD with the songs from 1950-60s, and some of the pin-up images were used on the cover illustration. The day before I went to London for the first time ever – and incidentally, on the April Fool’s Day, 1 April 2004 – I suddenly envisaged a vivid similarity between Magritte’s pipe and one of those pin-up girls. And really, you cannot say they are totally dissimilar, when you look at them this way (see the images on the left and right; the image on the right is by Greg Hildebrandt).

The Russian poem was written instantly, but it was only this year that I began to think seriously of adding a video montage to it, to illustrate the whole idea. Surprisingly or not, it took Magritte to celebrate his 110th birthday upstairs for me to finally create what was rather difficult at first. I hope you enjoy the English result below.

The Act of Smoking

…………………………………..Ceci n’est pas une pipe
……………………………………………….René Magritte

That what you see is not a pipe.
Imagine: two tender feet
Enter your mouth in a slow movement,
And you breathe in a tangy aroma of sex,
Watching in front of you a beautiful head
Trembling in the fumes of passion.
And, giving in fully to love,
You mentally move your finger
From feet along the legs
Reaching to the cherished curve
Full of the finest tobacco,
Which is what you adore –
Bosom or ass –
And finally, deciding to surrender to lust,
You tightly squeeze the bosom (or ass?),
Drawing in as deeply as you can stand, –
As you can afford,
As you can –
The scent of the Belle Dame,
Of a whore, or a choir girl, or a student,
Of a music-hall dancer,
Of Justine, Mary or Greta,
And let the smoke out through your nostrils,
Relishing how the taste
Sinks deep into your stomach,
And then, taking a woman out of your mouth,
You gently slap her at the front or on the back,
Shaking off the remains of love into an ash tray
And putting the body away into a slip –
Till next time.

Parole, and Paul Ennis on Heidegger and the Word

I wrote The Word in 2006, and then it took two years and a Dublin Heidegger student to write a review of it. Paul Ennis is writing a Ph.D. thesis on Heidegger, “mostly on topological concerns, but also trying to work out authenticity“. As I admitted in the comment to his post, I am not as good a student of this philosopher as Paul evidently is. In fact – and it even surprised me to an extent – I recently found some Heidegger-esque thoughts about language and its expressive potential in one of my paper notebooks that date back to 2004, whereas I first read Wozu dichter? in 2006. I suppose this means why I was so taken by this essay in the first place, even though it seems that by 2006 I’d forgotten about those jotted thoughts of mine.

I should be quick to say that I read several of his works, but invariably, the reason why I’m also so interested is because since 2003 my modus vivendi has been bilingual and multicultural in the widest sense of the word. I have also been taking considerable interest in Translation Theory, and Heidegger’s conclusions intrigue me because I am immediately aware that, when I read his works in Russian or English, I read the interpreted Heidegger. And while I don’t doubt the skill of his translators, I nevertheless understand that there are stylistical and interpretative differences between the German and English languages. The matter is all the trickier because Heidegger in those essays is concerned about poetry, and we all know how difficult it is to translate a poem.

Paul’s enthusiastic response to The Word enthused me, too, and I left a rather long comment on the post in his blog. Being a Sagittarius, hence ruled by Jupiter, I do have this strong inclination to Philosophy, on the one hand, and abundance, on the other, and in that comment the two happily came together. I think this frightens people off sometimes, but thankfully, Paul is now intrepidly answering the comments to that post. I am really grateful to him for this, especially because I have been following his blog, too. Another Heidegger Blog is tightly focused on Heidegger, the various themes in his work, and the response to Heidegger’s work both by his and our contemporaries. The only real problem methinks with Arts and Humanities blogs is that their authors often tend to do something else in life (like earning money to support the body, writing dissertations, and such like), whereas the thought requires time and – contrary to whatever we may think – some physical effort, especially when writing is concerned.

Discussion about Heidegger and The Word.

I contemplated recently the use of language once again, which resulted in the poem that I titled in Italian, after Mina’s song. Both poem and its translation were impromtu, but when I read the text over I realised there was yet another link to Heidegger’s text. In Wozu dichter? again he speaks about the man being a “merchant” (apologies, I’m relying on the Russian text) who constantly measures things without ever knowing their true value. While the English translation is very faithful to the original, I substituted the Russian for “words” (слова) with the French “paroles”. The reason is simple: the Russian poem is titled after Mina’s song in Italian which was famously covered in French by Dalida. It made sense to highlight this in the translation, which can also elucidate the interpretative facility of language.

Paroles, paroles

Paroles, paroles… Is there a price to words,
Or their value is indeed invented,
When scales are used to measure their worth
To give to someone as a gift or credit,
To which the weights are always other words?

Paroles, paroles… From underneath their face
A subject lurks, occasional and silent,
Escaping to the infinitive’s maze,
Abandoning the predicate’s confinement,
Confusing all superlatives in haste.

Paroles, paroles… I also live the words
But now, taking off my famous smile,
I think: do you have really any worth,
So usual, wise, eternal, versatile,
Or are you always words, but mere words?

English translation © Julia Shuvalova 2008.

I Must Not Tell How Dear You Are To Me (Vita Sackville-West)

Я не должна сказать, как дорог ты.
Это загадка даже для меня,
Кто должен лучше знать. И тайны той
Открыть я не посмею глубины.

Когда был май, любила я тебя;
Казалось мне, мы вечность обрели.
Я там была в миг дивной чистоты,
В объятиях твоих, совсем дитя.

Ты был любим и летнею порой,
А дерзкой юности прекрасные мечты
Опасны были и полуясны, – как поцелуй,
Что царь делил с печальною луной.

Теперь же осень листья золотит,
И вот смотри, как, тридцать лет спустя,
Богат, надежен, крепок наш амбар,
Что верно урожай любви хранит!

Russian translation © Julia Shuvalova 2008

I must not tell how dear you are to me.
It is unknown, a secret from myself
Who should know best. I would not if I could
Expose the meaning of such mystery.

I loved you then, when love was Spring, and May,
Eternity is here and now, I thought;
The pure and perfect moment briefly caught
As in your arms, but still a child, I lay.

Loved you when summer deepened into June
And those fair, wild, ideal dreams of youth
Were true yet dangerous and half unreal
As when Endymion kissed the mateless moon.

But now when autumn yellows all the leaves
And thirty seasons mellow our long love,
How rooted, how secure, how strong, how rich,
How full the barn that holds our gardened sheaves!

Quoted from Portrait of a Marriage by Nigel Nicolson.

The London Routemaster: Competition and Inspiration

The old London bus, originally uploaded by loscuadernosdejulia.

The photo you see in the post was made in London this July, as I was walking from the Strand to Trafalgar Square (I took the picture from the staircase that led to the Royal Society of Arts). In the morning I took a bus from Lancaster Gate to Euston, left my luggage to store, and then took my favourite walk from Euston Rd to Russell Sq and down Southampton Row. From there I got to the Strand, and from the Strand I walked to Trafalgar Sq. I was planning to visit Victoria and Albert Museum, but I didn’t want to take the tube, nor did I want to hop on and off the different buses. Eventually, I took the Heritage Route no.9 bus from Trafalgar Sq that circulates between Royal Albert Hall and Aldwych. But in the picture above you see the second of the two heritage routes, no. 15; it operates between Trafalgar Sq and Tower Hill.

Routemaster in Wikipedia
London Routemaster Heritage Route

And so, more on the subject of passion. The comments you can read on this photo’s page on Flickr sound as if they’d been left by a native Londoner. In fact, Jason Albright (aka austinmini1275) is the native of Hagerstown, MD (the U.S.), and has always been interested in transportation, and the London buses, in particular. He also pointed out to the fact that in the photo I managed to catch not one, but two London icons: the Routemaster and the FX4-type black cab. As the person who easily mistakes Ford Beetle for Lamborgini, I am completely in awe with Jason’s competence.

As some of you might know, Boris Johnson vowed during his campaign for the Mayor of London to bring the Routemasters back. In spite of mixed comments, Mr Johnson is keeping his word on this, and here is the New Bus for London competition. The competition closes on September 19th, 2008. To make things clearer, the new London bus design will be based on the AEC Routemaster, but the organisers, and Mr Johnson in particular, are aiming to go further. They want to hear from both professional designers who can submit the whole plan and regular commuters who can contribute their experience and ideas for improvement. The first prize is the hefty £25,000, with several smaller awards for “great ideas”.

Whether London buses will all be Routemaster-esque by 2012 or not, is the matter of time and money. This will certainly be a great feature to enhance the Olympics experience for the capital, but exactly how efficient it is, one will have to wait and see. The current biggest drawback of the Routemasters is that they don’t accommodate the needs of disabled passengers and don’t have sufficient space for prams and luggage.

I got to use the Routemaster in spring 2004 when I visited London for the first time ever. I was staying in a hostel in Fitzroy St and taking a bus from Tottenham Court Rd to Euston Rd, to visit the British Library. One day I took the Routemaster, and the experience of riding it later transcended into verse: in the 2004 poem called The Ship, which is in fact dedicated to the London Routemasters, I compared the experience of being of this bus with the experience of sailing in the open sea. The verbatim translation is below; the Russian original is in the form of a fourteen liner:

I am a random passenger on the ship.
I come aboard and say farewell to calm.
I leave the shore behind and sail
Forth, wherever the ship takes me.

A captain-conductor accepted me as an equal
And doesn’t mind sharing his stand with me,
And so I lose the sight of the shore,
While watching the waves, in excitement.

And at the very moment when the ship
Sails into the ocean, and from the distant lands
The seagulls come and bring to her their sorrow,

I feel: I behold the entire world.
And there, beneath, the road rolls like a wave,
And in the wind I sing the song of freedom.

English translation © Julia Shuvalova

La Prose: A Microphone

A microphone is I.

I am a microphone.

Since childhood, this question has been stuck in my head: people stand in front of the microphone, and speak, and speak, but what does the microphone think in the meantime?

The question followed me everywhere. I dreamt that the day would come when I would let the world know the answer to this mysterious question: what a mic thinks when people speak into it. Deep inside me I was preparing myself to this future. I read a lot. I studied the construction of the microphone. I asked people what they felt, when standing in front of the mic. Nearly everyone said they were nervous.

My metamorphosis occurred practically unnoticed, almost by accident. Simply, I got so used to the thought of becoming a microphone that I finally became one. And on a day when I was first taken onto the stage I was nervous, too.

When they first plugged me in, it was terrible. I screamed, terrified, picturing how I was going to die due to a short circuit. But the electrician was well experienced in such matters:

– Why is this thing jarring so loud? – he asked. – Turn the volume off.

I was rupturing in silence.

The brightest memory of the five years of my service has become a New Year’s concert. I still recall some moments of it, with either sadness or disgust, but always in hope that nothing LIKE THIS will ever happen again. It was then that I for the first time realised what it was like – to be a mic.

They were adorning me for a long time, wound me in tinsel and put a silver cap on my head. I could barely see through it, besides it was not my size and squeezed my head too tight. I resisted them putting it on, I jarred all I could, soon I felt very hot, but who would care? Who would listen to a microphone? I resolved to waiting.

They took me onto the big stage and put me in the middle, but close to the edge. Being a cultured person, I, as you may understand, found it strange standing with my back to the audience. This is why for some time I tried to turn around, especially when an artist would let me. There are some artists, as you know, who cannot deal with the transferrable technical objects. These objects constantly rotate in their hands. But even when I did turn I could still barely see. These people who cannot deal with those objects try to disguise such inability behind all sorts of abrupt gestures and jerks, so, as soon as I managed to turn my left side to the audience, I was immediately forced to make a U-turn. As a result, my vertigo started, and in those circumstances I could no longer observe the audience.

Later a girl came on stage. She was small, but she wanted to sing in me, although there was another mic nearby, and who would stop her singing in it? And then they bended me, almost in half, and now I was facing the audience not with my back but with the part below it. Just imagine what a cultured person should feel when they turned him back to people and bended in half? I tried to protest, I rattled, but the audience laughed, and someone tapped me on the head, and once again I humbly stood, and the English words resonated from my head.

When the event reached its height, a man appeared on stage, grabbed me, straightened me, lifted me up in the air, and ran with me on stage for some time. I don’t remember what he sang, because I had too bad a vertigo and a headache, besides he was violently shaking me, carried me in one hand, pressed his mouth tightly to my head, and finally fell to my feet, exhausted. I looked down on his shaved nape and naked sweaty back, after which I fainted and fell on the man, and he screamed, and I was promptly taken away from the stage.

This was not the only concert. I am constantly being given to those who bend me in half, or shove me to the audience, with my head down, so the raging crowd could scream their hails and praise to their idol. My God! Every time I am frightened that this person drops me, and the crowd will be stomping me, stomping, stomping, – how horrific, even to think about it! For if they can stomp a person without looking, why make a difference for a microphone… People! They do not even know that once I also used to be a person, but I have got no blood left now, and, if they begin to stomp me, I will only rattle and grate my teeth in pain. How can they not understand that things have soul, too, and this rattling comes from its screams, and not from a plug put into a wrong socket? If I get broken, I will be thrown out…

This is what I think about these days, when I am a mic, and people use me to sing and speak. I pay no attention to words and verses. I only think, almost beg: please, be careful!

April 2002

Exercises in Loneliness – IX (Loving Streetlamps)

I don’t remember when, or how, I developed this strange fascination for streetlights. The fascination is such that I admitted a few years ago in a company of the uni friends that I approach each streetlight as a person – hence when I take a photo of one, I conceive of it as a portrait.

In Moscow, I had this tall streetlight outside my house. It stood on the opposite side of the road, close to the bus stop, and was very tall – I lived on the fifth floor, and its “head” was almost parallel to my window. I had two streetlights opposite and one streetlight close to the gate of my old house, and where I live now, there is also a streetlight opposite my abode. While it may not seem significant in itself, for the person who, like me, is conscious of having had a streetlight clearly visible from the window all their life, it would probably make a huge difference, had they found themselves in such place where they could not see any streetlight from the window.

Arguably, the most fascinating moment is the interpretation of this image. My heart melt when I read The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis for the first time ever (that was in 2005) and saw an illustration in the book with exactly the kind of streetlight I like the most. The lampshade had four sides, with a crown. It is a typical fairy-tale visualisation of a streetlight, and it may be interesting to observe that the illustrator of the book did not try to draw something original. On the one hand, the illustrator probably took inspiration from the streetlights of C. S. Lewis’s era; on the other, as much as fairy-tales can be original, there is a strong element of the typical in each of them, and therefore it probably did not serve to be too original.

As in Lewis’s story as in the broadest cultural sense, a streetlight is a symbol of light and faith. How we interpret this, is a different story. I know that with Lewis’s Narnia books there is a strong temptation to interpret it in the Biblical context. I do believe, however, that to narrow the Narnia stories to a kind of “Bible for kids” is to impoverish the book, hence even as far as The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe is concerned, a streetlight should just be seen as a symbol of light – with all the array of meanings. The meanings can be: a candle in the wind; a lantern with which a Greek philosopher Diogenes looked for the Man; a lighthouse. A streetlight can be seen as a lamp in the house which is “thy castle”, thus marking a place that we define both as familiar and familial. It is akin to a steady flame of an emotion, an idea, or a principle (and faith, for that matter). At the same time, it evokes the message of the Parisian motto: “fluctuat, nec mergitur” (shaken, but not sunk). A streetlight, being essentially a tall metal pole with a lampshade and an electric bulb, is very much like a boat – and the very fact that it does not fall or extinguish in the wind feeds our craving for hope and security.

In spite of the fact that I would describe myself as a communicable and sociable person, I have always liked to be alone. There is a lot I could say about this, and it certainly does not mean that I want to be alone. But, as I said before, I do treasure the moments of loneliness, be it creative or just a time on my own. However – and I have just caught myself on this thought – I have never been totally alone. Wherever I was, I have always been accompanied by a streetlight, which fact and experience I recorded in a poem five years ago. You can read the original Russian text here; below is the verbatim translation. It is true that, due to how I see streetlights, in the poem the streetlight is anthropomorphic (and masculine – mostly for grammatical reasons). It is a person, with whom I can share the deepest secrets, and whom I sometimes ignore – possibly for the mere fact of its being silent. In effect, both of us are lonely, but we both need one another poetically, as pragmatically. A streetlight can be an inspiration (poetic); but I need it to shine on me and on my walk (however we understand the word “walk”), and the streetlights need me (or someone like me) because without us they no longer are.

A Streetlight

A lone streetlight
Shines into my window
We are used to each other,
And so we don’t care.

I may not notice
Its slim silhouette,
With a very a big, flat
And grey shade

When sometimes it stands
Unlit for a long time,
Or, like a candle,
It trembles in the wind.

This is… a habit…
What can you do… such a pity…
For too long a time and too faithfully
This streetlight shines on me,

Too often at night
I address it, –
Only it understands
My thoughts,

No-one else knows everything,
I will tell to no-one but it
Of whom I need, and who is close,
And for whom I don’t wait.

It is silent, but this silence
Is worth all the words to me.
And so it happens
That in the morning

I once again follow the sun,
Having shed the past burden,
And it’s waiting, knowing for sure
That I will be back soon.

Below is my “Streetlights” photoset on Flickr.

http://www.slideflickr.com/slide/y6NExrQk

The UEFA Cup Final in Manchester on YouTube

Unfortunately, I cannot update the previous post with the video I put up on YouTube. The video is a montage of the photos I took and the audio I recorded in Manchester on the day of the game. In addition to sharing it with you, may I also take to a bit of boasting and say that it is currently in the top 100 videos watched tpoday in the Guru category (see the image). Not something I’ve hit before…

Read the previous about the Manchester game.

The Word (Reading Heidegger)

I want to love you, but I know not, how;
To call your name – but is there such a name
That may become you? To the spheres above
I now entrust the knowledge of the same.
I barely hope and yet I almost fear,
They will have found the word, and then (alas!)
I will gain power over you to bear –
The power that no mortal ever has.

(Хочу любить, но как – не знаю сам.
Хочу назвать тебя, но что за имя
Мне назовет тебя? Я небесам
Вверяю свое знание отныне,
Едва надеясь и почти боясь,
Что слово для тебя они мне явят,
И с этим словом обрету я власть
Над тем, чем я совсем не в силах править.

04 апреля 2006 г.

While this poem probably reads as a love poem, it was, in fact, inspired by several essays by Martin Heidegger, particularly Wozu Dichter? (1946), translated into English as Why Poets? or What Are Poets For? The theme I picked upon was the immanent limitations of the language, which, however, remain unknown to people. It is through poetry as the most symbolic and historic genre that people can access the past and therefore establish a link between their time and the time-before-Time, i.e. eternity. It is thanks to this linguistic, poetic link that the mankind exists, although it is by no means close to understanding of the essence of things.

So, in my poem I attempted to look at my object of affection as if I was aware of these limitations. Because our world has reportedly begun with the Word, it is important that we find a -potentially – precise description for our object. It is all the more important, if we want to express our love for them, for apparently we want to underline the uniqueness of this person through a particular verbal expression. How can you possibly “boil” someone down to but one word? How can someone, being an individual and invariably a complex person, be pushed within the boundaries of a single word? Is there such word at all? The limitations of the language are the limitations of our knowledge, and if there is someone who may help us, they have to reside in the “spheres above”. In the original Russian text I use the word “the skies”, which can be interpreted as either Cosmos or God.

I entrust these spheres to return me the answer to my question. And then I am torn between the hope to receive the answer – for I want to be able to love this person, and so to name them, to describe them, – and the fear. Why fear? Because if such word is to be found, such will be what we would conventionally call the divine knowledge. Again, it can be called the secret knowledge or cosmic knowledge. Whatever we call it, this is something that doesn’t really belong to this world. The idea I express in the last two lines is that an individual carries a universe within themselves, which no other individual can rule or comprehend on a purely rational (in this context – mechanical) level (i.e. through a single word). Yet with such word we bring the universe down to a tiny particle, thus imagining that we have known and understood it. This is not possible, and therefore, if the spheres above do return me the answer, I will appear as if I have gained power over something, which in fact will always remain a mystery.

Some Heidegger links:

Ereignis – an excellent English-language source of articles and publications by and about Heidegger, plus useful links, collected by Pete.

Martin Heidegger – a German site, without the actual works, as I could gather, but with a full bibliography.

Heidegger.ru – in Russian, many texts available in Word format documents.

Martin Heidegger at Evene.fr – in French.

Heidegger Association of Tokyo – in Japanese.

The bibliographic details for the essay What Are Poets For? are:

Heidegger, Martin. “What are Poets For?” In Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by
Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1971.

Wozu Dichter? – a full German text in a .PDF file.

Michel Polnareff – Tam-Tam

It’s been a while since I posted any translations from the most adorable Amiral, so I’m about to rectify this omission. I’ve only recently discovered this hit song from 1980s and, as it happens, fell head over heels for it – to the point that I was doing the Google AdWords Professional exam today with this song in my earphones. I already passed the GAP exam successfully before, but I had to do this once again. I can testify that l’Amiral’s songs are very, very effective!! Merci beaucoup, Monsieur Polnareff!

Tours Eiffel, échafaudages et dix heures par jour de trime
Ca n'est pas une plac' pour moi
Matins gris sur macadam et marteaux-piqueurs en prime
Vraiment pas une place pour moi
J'en ai marre, j'en ai marre de voir les animaux dans les zoos
J'en ai marre, j'en ai marre de voir des monuments, des drapeaux

J’veux partir
Redevenir un homm’ préhisto
Avec rien sur la peau
Jouer du tam tam tam tam tam

Aspirines et papiers bleus et cachets pour pas dormir
Ca n’est pas une vie pour moi
Vitamines et intraveines ou tablettes pour se nourrir
Vraiment pas une vie pour moi
J’en ai marre, j’en ai marre de lire des trucs moches dans les journaux
J’en ai marre, très très marre qu’on m’dise c’qui est laid ou ce qui est beau

J’veux partir
Redevenir l’homme préhisto
Avec rien sur sa peau
Jouer du tam tam tam tam tam

Au secours!
J’veux savoir où sont les filles bronzées en photo,
Au secours,
J’veux savoir où il fait beau, il fait toujours chaud

J’veux partir
Redevenir l’homme préhisto
Sans télé ni journaux
Jouer du tam tam tam tam tam

J’veux partir
Redevenir l’homme préhisto
Bye, bye moi vouloir
Jouer du tam tam tam tam

Eiffel Towers, scaffoldings and ten hours a day of slavery –
This is not a place for me.
Grey mornings on the pavement with jackhammers on top –
This is really not a place for me.
I’m tired, I’m tired of watching animals in zoos,
I’m tired, I’m tired of looking at the monuments and flags.

I want to leave,
To be a prehistoric man again,
With nothing on the skin,
And to play tam-tam-tam-tam-tam.

Aspirin, and blue paper napkins, and tablets against sleep –
This is not a life for me.
Vitamins, intravenous or the food supplements –
This is really not a life for me.
I’m tired, I’m tired of terrible things in the papers,
I’m tired, so-so tired of being told what is ugly and what is beautiful.

I want to leave,
To be a prehistoric man again,
With nothing on the skin,
And to play tam-tam-tam-tam-tam.

Help!
I want to know where the tanned girls from the photos are.
Help!
I want to know where that place is where it’s nice and always hot.

I want to leave,
To be a prehistoric man again,
Without a TV or papers,
And to play tam-tam-tam-tam-tam.

I want to leave,
To be a prehistoric man again,
Bye-bye, this is me, wanting
To play tam-tam-tam-tam-tam.