tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71262815439747442532024-03-25T20:25:35.965-04:00On the wingThoughts on literature and music from Frank BeckFrank Beckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15289440558518599583noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126281543974744253.post-84549190505914781712023-09-20T20:22:00.456-04:002024-03-25T20:25:04.113-04:00The Duino Elegies at 100<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi726-SSc2MRSHiBL5mbc3A5UG9ijcgPBlNMqtjLmdVvL0v1tWDwusJMwrFLkkeXtA4aRB3-SuZDFOLtlqOHkTXTPuSBIwOZPrm8XtoMBN8-HuDfiOQFPrHm8uzhLQ3D2Oye-oZsUjSeHbE9ypylINolYiGO1E64E2DbstNFtxHmtNlJJc5fbIS-eRFF3vD/s859/rilke%20portrait_pasternak+%20-%201.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="859" data-original-width="587" height="965" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi726-SSc2MRSHiBL5mbc3A5UG9ijcgPBlNMqtjLmdVvL0v1tWDwusJMwrFLkkeXtA4aRB3-SuZDFOLtlqOHkTXTPuSBIwOZPrm8XtoMBN8-HuDfiOQFPrHm8uzhLQ3D2Oye-oZsUjSeHbE9ypylINolYiGO1E64E2DbstNFtxHmtNlJJc5fbIS-eRFF3vD/w659-h965/rilke%20portrait_pasternak+%20-%201.jpeg" width="659" /></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: large;">Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the ranks</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">of angels? Even if one should suddenly</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span><span>take me to his heart, </span></span>I would fade in the power of his</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">stronger existence. For beauty is nothing</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">but an onset of terror that we can barely stand,</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">and that we admire because it serenely disdains</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">to destroy us. Each angel is terrifying.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">And so I restrain myself and swallow my dark, sobbing</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span>call for help. Ah, whom then can we turn to,</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span>when we are in need? Not angels, not people,</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span>and the clever animals already know</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span>we were never entirely at home here,</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span>in the interpreted world. There remains for us, perhaps,</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span>some tree on a hillside, that we might see it</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span>every day; there remains a remembered street</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span>and our twisted loyalty to an old habit</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span>that likes it with us, and so stayed on and never left.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Oh, and the night, the night when the wind of the cosmos</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">wears on our faces -- with whom has it not lingered? Longed for,</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">gently disappointing night, and so hard for a single heart</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">to bear. Is it any easier for lovers?</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Ah, each with the other only conceals their lot.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">You <i>still</i> don't know? Cast the emptiness from your arms</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">into the spaces we breathe, and perhaps the birds</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">will feel the widening air in happier flight.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Yes, the spring times may have needed you. Many a star</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">was waiting for you to perceive it. There was</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">a wave that arose close to you long ago, or,</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">as you walked beneath an open window, a violin</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">offered itself up. That was the task assigned you.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">How have you dealt with it? Did not anticipation</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">distract you, as if all this were announcing</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">the arrival of a lover? (Where would you keep her,</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">with all these thoughts, both great and strange, coming</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">and going, and often staying through the night.)</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Still, when you are yearning, sing of the lovers;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">the fame of their feeling is not yet immortal enough.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Those you almost envy, the deserted ones, seem</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">even more ardent than those whom love nurtured.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Begin, ever afresh, the praise that can never suffice;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">consider that a hero lives on, so even a downfall</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">is only a pretext to be: his ultimate birth.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">But Nature, exhausted, takes lovers back to herself,</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">as if she were powerless to create them again.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Have you thought enough about Gaspara Stampa</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">so that any young woman whose lover has gone,</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">with the lofty example of that great passion,</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">might recall her and feel: if only I were like her?</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Should not these oldest sorrows of ours finally</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">bear some fruit? Is it not time that we lovingly free</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">ourselves from the ones we love, and, trembling, endure it:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">as the arrow endures the bow, so that, poised for its leap,</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">it can be <i>more</i> than itself? For nowhere lets us abide.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Voices, voices. Listen, my heart, as only saints</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">have listened: until a mighty summons lifted them</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">above the ground; yet they kept kneeling,</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">those impossible ones, and paid the call no heed:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><i>such</i> was their listening. Not that you could withstand</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">the voice of <i>God</i> -- far from it. But listen to the rustling,</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">the uninterrupted message that shapes itself from silence.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">It murmurs to you now from the youthful dead.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Whenever you went into churches in Rome</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">or Naples, did their fate not softly speak to you?</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Or perhaps some solemn inscription gave you pause,</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">like the other day in Santa Maria Formosa.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">What do they want of me? That I should quietly</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">dispel the sense of injustice that sometimes hinders,</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">a little, the free movement of their spirits.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Of course, it is strange to dwell on the Earth no more,</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">to practice no more the barely learned skills;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">not to give to roses and other such promising things</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">the meanings that belong to a human future.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">To be no more everything that one was,</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">in endlessly anxious hands, and even to put aside</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">one's own name like a broken plaything.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Strange to no longer wish one's wishes. Strange,</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">to see everything once connected fluttering</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">loosely in space. And to be dead is arduous</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">and full of catching up, till one gradually</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">senses a little eternity. -- But the living all make</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">the mistake of drawing distinctions too sharply.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Angels (they say) often cannot tell whether they move</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">among the living or the dead. The eternal tide</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">surges forever through both realms, bearing all ages</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">within it, and drowns out both in its flow.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">In the end, they need us no more, those taken early:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">one weans oneself gently from earthly things, as one was</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">tenderly weaned from a mother's breasts. But we, who need</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">such great mysteries and for whom blessed progress</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">so often springs from grief -- <i>could</i> we exist with them?</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Is the story in vain how once, in the mourning for Linos,</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">the daring first music broke through the numb and barren air;</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">only then, in the startled space from which a nearly godlike young man</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">had suddenly departed forever, did emptiness feel</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">the vibration that now enthralls us and consoles and helps.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Rainer Maria Rilke, 'Die Erste Elegie' from Duineser Elegien, 1912-1922; translation by Frank Beck.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><i><span>A century on, this is a fresh attempt to render </span></i></span><i><span>the first of Rilke's Duino Elegies in English, </span></i><i><span>using the vocabulary and diction of the </span></i><i><span>poet's contemporaries. To do so, I have consulted concordances of the works of E.M. Forster, Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Virginia Woolf.</span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><span><br /></span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><span>While German and English employ very different sentence structures, I have tried to echo Rilke's cadences wherever possible. And I have attempted to capture the subtle alterations in tone, as the poem moves effortlessly from the intimate to the oracular.</span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><span><br /></span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>There is a long tradition of translating Rilke into English. From the many versions available, I found those of Jessie Lemont, Nora Wydenbruck (a native speaker of German), and Ruth Speirs especially helpful when the meaning of one of Rilke's constructions eluded me.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>As the Duino Elegies enter their second century, it is easy to see why they are among the most cherished works of modern literature.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CZ5a3gVlVCO2T27Iicqsya2zmru9sc85/view?usp=sharing">Translation and German text as a pdf file</a></li><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npEwv3lSuuc&t=174s">Patrick Imhof reads The First Elegy</a><br /></li><li><a href="https://www.diehoren.com/2013/01/rilkes-encounter-with-ancient-greece-in.html">Rilke's encounter with Ancient Greece</a><br /></li><li><a href="https://www.wallstein-verlag.de/9783835354654-duineser-elegien.html">A new edition of Die Duineser Elegien and related poems</a><br /></li><li><a href="https://www.castellodiduino.it/en/">The Duino Castle at it is today</a></li></ul></div></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Above: 'Portrait of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke' (detail) by Leonid Osipovich Pasternak, 1928.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1193" data-original-width="800" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP1f0bbkSBEXr9oMIDOBvKs9KsCw_GpaMa2CmVbB_xf2sE2BnrzIMl_BXgwbIxc0gTXCzqfAbUkRlRmLXG9Bp-t0EjE5jxplGcr8FdpJugYtK3nu2wGS_eZcTIBDSySnDCMpeHOKwyy3-i3NeXQxtdd4HiN3TWZLRZY1nEZweagGk9Qvyhb6Y-RxrmFquN/w430-h640/Duineser%20Elegien+%20-%201.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="430" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Cover of the first edition, published by Insel Verlag<br /> in October 1923</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP1f0bbkSBEXr9oMIDOBvKs9KsCw_GpaMa2CmVbB_xf2sE2BnrzIMl_BXgwbIxc0gTXCzqfAbUkRlRmLXG9Bp-t0EjE5jxplGcr8FdpJugYtK3nu2wGS_eZcTIBDSySnDCMpeHOKwyy3-i3NeXQxtdd4HiN3TWZLRZY1nEZweagGk9Qvyhb6Y-RxrmFquN/s1193/Duineser%20Elegien+%20-%201.jpeg"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span><i><b><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />I am imagining with such fabulous clarity </b></i></span><i><b>how you must look now: just as in those days </b></i><i><b>long, long ago, when the brightness in your eyes </b></i><i><b>and your cheerful stance would sometimes </b></i><i><b>make one imagine a boy: and whichever hope </b></i><i><b>moved you then, whatever it was that</b></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span><i><b>that you </b></i></span><i><b>were asking of life, </b></i><i><b>absolutely and intensely, as your only need and necessity -- is now as if fulfilled.</b></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Lou Andreas-Salomé, in a letter to Rilke on February 16, 1922, on receiving the last three Elegies by mail. (Translation by Edward Snow and Michael Winkler)</span></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLcWKvJWUiIojlTqGGYY6KZRSOuosYeUDG7Kq4rXQUjuxnouoG_pqglBEcxpyO6x2XYlDd1jhIa89WGXoMGOWgFJLxoqt83jXjDQotIpU62uszrnGuQWLlRto2y_8boC3IhRjnOBcU8HzsxKzsSWMUWOcreIB0wa2VbK9w1TJqwYb2Pn2KkdffOuCVo25L/s700/Die%20Erste%20Elegie+%20-%201.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="532" data-original-width="700" height="486" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLcWKvJWUiIojlTqGGYY6KZRSOuosYeUDG7Kq4rXQUjuxnouoG_pqglBEcxpyO6x2XYlDd1jhIa89WGXoMGOWgFJLxoqt83jXjDQotIpU62uszrnGuQWLlRto2y_8boC3IhRjnOBcU8HzsxKzsSWMUWOcreIB0wa2VbK9w1TJqwYb2Pn2KkdffOuCVo25L/w640-h486/Die%20Erste%20Elegie+%20-%201.jpeg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">First page of the First Elegy in the original German edition</span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Frank Beckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15289440558518599583noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126281543974744253.post-54780134585126318022022-10-02T00:17:00.999-04:002024-01-06T11:40:48.162-05:00Welcome to The Magic Mountain!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRIXe09sI0FckFHSZX6wXMCGBCt2Gb_fJAFhMeN2zJo41gvBzQE0Wo3H2oymBnovuyQAU7LIhYA-odxQ-9ZlxmGPDwFlwDHtDnD30snpuPFGbzHBgil-_gwvefmiNJmp4Uo6E7wS4FDFWXdeevnSHenj0Pn-PQNM-v7HtsgagPyspf0vFsBEeaZGA93A/s2045/SchatzalpSolarium.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1530" data-original-width="2045" height="506" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRIXe09sI0FckFHSZX6wXMCGBCt2Gb_fJAFhMeN2zJo41gvBzQE0Wo3H2oymBnovuyQAU7LIhYA-odxQ-9ZlxmGPDwFlwDHtDnD30snpuPFGbzHBgil-_gwvefmiNJmp4Uo6E7wS4FDFWXdeevnSHenj0Pn-PQNM-v7HtsgagPyspf0vFsBEeaZGA93A/w679-h506/SchatzalpSolarium.jpg" width="679" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">If you hope to hold a listener's attention for 37 hours, you'd better capture it at once, and David Rintoul does that. His reading of Thomas Mann's classic novel, in John E. Wood's marvelously fluent translation, is alluring right from the start, but in such a matter-of-fact way that listeners may be enchanted before they know what's happening (click <a href="https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Magic-Mountain-Audiobook/B088G1R4JZ">here</a> to listen):</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b><i>An ordinary young man was on his way</i></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b><i>from his hometown of Hamburg</i></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b><i>to Davos-Platz in the canton of Graübunden.</i></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b><i>It was the height of summer,</i></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><b><i>and he planned to stay for three weeks.</i></b></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Hans Castorp's journey to visit his cousin Joachim at the Berghof Sanatorium, high in the Swiss Alps, will turn into a stay that is measured in years, not weeks. Before he's through, every idea in his head that summer afternoon will be challenged -- and most of them found wanting. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is a classic German <i>Bildungsroman</i>: the story of a character's moral growth. Yet at times it seems a parody, ironically questioning whether such growth is even possible. Rintoul keeps both sides of that ambiguity alive.</span></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">But what makes this audiobook so extraordinary is Rintoul's richly imaginative portrayal of Mann's characters: not just Hans, an engineer-in-training with a curious mind, but the entire international company of patients who come and go at the sanatorium, culminating in Mynheer Peeperkorn, the large-than-life Dutchman whose charisma overwhelms everyone, although he often fails to complete a sentence. The fellow would not be out of place in Dickens. </span><div><div><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQux0jRgRr0IernCa6mpIl8z-FgF4SACeXxb7_zoQ0Wodq_qrMqabX-7hizHVRfQXMJo2Z-CxZ8g2KTrnXZ-zzWzVFtAd_U1CR04L4mAgVapK-tbh3ujexGTeC0nwcLvsQ_S4sX6PN5K-esKiwobS24AhxzRdbwF0KFEOI2CQ0FfwRLpg2RCVbAxabnQ/s600/David%20Rintoul.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="412" data-original-width="600" height="473" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQux0jRgRr0IernCa6mpIl8z-FgF4SACeXxb7_zoQ0Wodq_qrMqabX-7hizHVRfQXMJo2Z-CxZ8g2KTrnXZ-zzWzVFtAd_U1CR04L4mAgVapK-tbh3ujexGTeC0nwcLvsQ_S4sX6PN5K-esKiwobS24AhxzRdbwF0KFEOI2CQ0FfwRLpg2RCVbAxabnQ/w688-h473/David%20Rintoul.jpg" title="David Rintoul and Greg Haiste, who performed in Jessica Swales' Nell Gwynn at London's Globe Theatre" width="688" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">David Rintoul and Greg Haiste, preparing for Jessica Swales' <br /></span><i style="font-family: georgia;">Nell Gwynn </i><span style="font-family: georgia;">at the Globe Theatre (Photo: Tristram Kenton)</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Rintoul is just as successful with the narrator, whose cheerfully modest demeanor acts as a foil for Hans' strivings -- both to get well and to make sense of his life and the world around him. Rintoul's delivery is pitch-perfect, as when he addresses the gulf between the pre-war years at the Berghof and the readers of 1924. T</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">he narrator informs us that Hans' story "took place back then, long ago, in the old days of the world before the Great War, with whose beginnings so many things began; whose beginnings, it seems, have not yet ceased. But is not the pastness of a story that much more profound, more complete, more like a fairy tale, the tighter it fits up against the 'before'?"</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">The novel is certainly an enormous canvas, with room for evocative depictions of Alpine scenery alongside Mann's spirited dialogues and the expositions about physiology, which are as expansive as those about whales in <i>Moby Dick</i>. Rinoul has a prodigious ability to adjust his tone, tempo and dynamics for each of these, always keeping Mann's broader concept in view, just as a conductor must do with a Mahler symphony. Every variation is wisely judged.</span><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKHE488AzwIge3BSHgKfvnZrq7ZCjm3PFuS3yOMls8vcIMrungJao-ynsRD1ryo6zBjB2lFQ71nKeJaCwk0eHiaokrCopPlI4TS4Ovb0AfuUYhFHVJITItjLKNK1y0A5cSaL23Wcup-cgUW379chAcIdDUdm6Hq9_V-nxvyJlmV0CGfkWqMs0P7qdazQ/s1210/1924_Der_Zauberberg_(3).jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1084" data-original-width="1210" height="617" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKHE488AzwIge3BSHgKfvnZrq7ZCjm3PFuS3yOMls8vcIMrungJao-ynsRD1ryo6zBjB2lFQ71nKeJaCwk0eHiaokrCopPlI4TS4Ovb0AfuUYhFHVJITItjLKNK1y0A5cSaL23Wcup-cgUW379chAcIdDUdm6Hq9_V-nxvyJlmV0CGfkWqMs0P7qdazQ/w688-h617/1924_Der_Zauberberg_(3).jpeg" width="688" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">The first German edition of <i>Der Zauberberg</i> in 1924 <br />(Photo: H.-P. Haack, Leipzig)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Those who know the book will relish Rintoul's incarnations of Joachim Ziemßen, Hans' dutiful, soldier cousin; Clawdia Chauchat, the young woman Hans loves; Lodovico Settembrini, who guides his adventures in philosophy; Leo Naptha, who tries to make a Jesuit of him; and Director Behrens, the melancholy surgeon presiding over the Berghof's guests. Newcomers will find that the novel has lost none of its lustre, although readers have been enjoying and pondering Mann's story for nearly a century.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span><br />As for me, I'm already halfway through my second listen.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-9RFwqHMtgqLbj8_EE5KKoR0nzHdXPcfdKrhPmA_FusWR1KmDwYRGX64JBOfXhAOFt3BMz2_VWdCku7DkupccbcJQW7PaWGZYsoXiXT8QiJ5RfpPt7XcXxnX7xybdEDG5Wos63OeIY_qkHOn27mavwANwbLbp4_G3KSYH6vz7Vp7hIYRYOKj2UCe5qA/s1674/christoph%20eichhorn_1982%20-%201.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="974" data-original-width="1674" height="396" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-9RFwqHMtgqLbj8_EE5KKoR0nzHdXPcfdKrhPmA_FusWR1KmDwYRGX64JBOfXhAOFt3BMz2_VWdCku7DkupccbcJQW7PaWGZYsoXiXT8QiJ5RfpPt7XcXxnX7xybdEDG5Wos63OeIY_qkHOn27mavwANwbLbp4_G3KSYH6vz7Vp7hIYRYOKj2UCe5qA/w682-h396/christoph%20eichhorn_1982%20-%201.jpeg" width="682" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Christoph Eichhorn in the 1982 film adaptation by Hans W. Geißendörfer</span></td></tr></tbody></table></span></div><div><br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1953/01/the-making-of-the-magic-mountain/640771/">Thomas Mann on the novel's genesis</a></span></li><li><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/107311/the-magic-mountain-by-thomas-mann-translated-by-john-e-woods-introduction-by-a-s-byatt/"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">The Modern Library edition, with an introduction by A.S. Byatt</span></a><br /></li><li><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/to-the-magic-mountain"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Sally McGrane on <i>The Magic Mountain</i> in The New Yorker</span></a><br /></li><li><a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781571132482/a-companion-to-thomas-manns-imagic-mountaini/"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">A Companion to Thomas Mann's <i>Magic Mountain</i></span></a><br /></li><li><a href="https://www.schatzalp.ch/en/"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">The model for the Berghof as it is today</span></a><br /></li><li><a href="https://www.neh.gov/article/thomas-manns-civilized-uncertainty"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">An overview of Mann's works by Algis Valiunas</span></a><br /></li><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMK5gHFtN3M"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><i>Der Zauberberg</i>: Gert Westphal reads the novel's prologue in German</span></a><br /></li></ul><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRW_oTaign1oWcwYKofGEo-vFoRfZcRXNIETy2sKA6Fh8I545SH_cK7ChidGtmYhmcm-HDjEXvjofoNwJUGPEo_Wmy6W8UaegDRGHLGyHJUwISOPJ3Zr1ymfOh1MwhdUvy-96or5Jw-xku8HNuctJo2I1GlUTFDERdBT1VO7Y_cEBDtd5CIlsu2fr8kA/s1000/Thomas%20Mann+1943+by+Fred+Stein.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="804" data-original-width="1000" height="545" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRW_oTaign1oWcwYKofGEo-vFoRfZcRXNIETy2sKA6Fh8I545SH_cK7ChidGtmYhmcm-HDjEXvjofoNwJUGPEo_Wmy6W8UaegDRGHLGyHJUwISOPJ3Zr1ymfOh1MwhdUvy-96or5Jw-xku8HNuctJo2I1GlUTFDERdBT1VO7Y_cEBDtd5CIlsu2fr8kA/w678-h545/Thomas%20Mann+1943+by+Fred+Stein.jpg" width="678" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">My Hans is really a simple-minded hero, the young scion of good Hamburg society, and an indifferent engineer. But in the hermetic, feverish atmosphere of the enchanted mountain, the ordinary stuff of which he is made undergoes a heightening process that makes him capable of adventures in sensual, moral, intellectual spheres he would never have dreamed of in the “flatland.”</span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">(From Thomas Mann's "The Making of <i>The Magic Mountain</i>", which appeared in The Atlantic in 1953: see the first link above.)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Photo: the author in New York in 1943 by Fred Stein.</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"></div></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div></div></div></div><div style="text-align: right;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">October 4, 2022</span></b></div><div><p></p><p></p></div>Frank Beckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15289440558518599583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126281543974744253.post-69927346903101086222019-11-07T18:22:00.006-05:002021-10-02T17:41:34.030-04:00New songs from Anna Depenbusch<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicsHXmmS5PUMDiyWpIzQNiObs66zzlARYSnRrjEgw_pPHqTwZvV-9DRRToAF41vwM_cYe9zut_CBtEa6a4g214zfD6IF0nmlEQHTMbiyew_i5xfQuuaxKUAeoIFC798OFGvaL-Ryt4XJvx/s1600/anna+depenbusch+with+hat%252B+-+1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicsHXmmS5PUMDiyWpIzQNiObs66zzlARYSnRrjEgw_pPHqTwZvV-9DRRToAF41vwM_cYe9zut_CBtEa6a4g214zfD6IF0nmlEQHTMbiyew_i5xfQuuaxKUAeoIFC798OFGvaL-Ryt4XJvx/s640/anna+depenbusch+with+hat%252B+-+1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Anna Depenbusch </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">(Bayerischen Rundfunks)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Anna Depenbusch, one of Germany's leading singer/songwriters, has released "Kingfisher Frau"-- the first song from her new album ---- in an intimate performance from Berlin's Meisterhall, an historic concert venue built in 1910.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>"Kingfisher Frau" is dedicated to pioneering German mathematician Emmy Noether, but it speaks eloquently about anyone who, to use Depenbusch's metaphor, breaks from the ranks of the chorus and sings a song of her own.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Under the video, I've posted my translation of the lyrics, taking care to match the cadences of the German. I hope you'll like it.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Gs9ysIGpNNM/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Gs9ysIGpNNM?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Come on,
let her dream what she wants to--<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">she will do
that anyway.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">A director
is handing out roles:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Don Juan and Romeo.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Amidst the choir, half shadow, half light,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">right past the tenor a new face steps out,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">glittering feathers and heart deep-sea blue,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">and she’s singing her song--<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Kingfisher Frau.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Come on, let her think what she wants to--<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">she will do that anyway;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">they sing the song they’re supposed to<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">in an opera called Figaro.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">But for you the stage here is just too small.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I think these supporting roles no longer fit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">You shine so much brighter than spotlights can shine,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">and we hear your voice all the way up in the very back row. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Amidst the choir, half shadow, half light,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">right past the tenor a new face steps out,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">glittering feathers and heart deep-sea blue,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: medium;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">and she’s singing her song--</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Now for you the stage here is just too small.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">It’s been so long now since supporting roles fit. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">You shine so much brighter than spotlights can shine,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">and we hear your voice all the way up in the very back row. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Glittering
feathers and heart deep-sea blue,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">as you’re
singing your song--<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Kingfisher Frau.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Come on, let her say what she wants to--<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">She will shine anyway.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://lyricstranslate.com/de/anna-depenbusch-eisvogelfrau-lyrics.html"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The song's lyrics in German</span></a></li><li><a href="https://lyrics.diehoren.com/2020/09/5-meter.html"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">VIDEO: Another song from the new album</span></a></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://lyrics.diehoren.com/2017/04/stadt-land-fluss.html">VIDEO: A song from her 2017 album, "Das Alphabet der Anna Depenbusch"</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w694y6XwOWk">VIDEO: The singer discusses her new album (in German)</a></span></li><li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://reinventinghome.org/anna-depenbusch-our-love-affair-with-home/">My article about Anna Depenbusch at Reinventing Home</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.annadepenbusch.de/">Anna Depenbusch's website</a></span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<ul>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlRzPHhfR5gNViOeKhpNFL4911zBA7Xcufbwxj0erNNtDwVT7M7Q5quj-R3sGu5txd0bA6p64uNsBS5d4VmbzeNOQxX8U1n8-9I_FmfHMPQmHJBmYC86CoGe18b3WR27EL08ucj-h0C-2K/s1600/anna+depenbusch+in+meistervaal+-+1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="484" data-original-width="821" height="377" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlRzPHhfR5gNViOeKhpNFL4911zBA7Xcufbwxj0erNNtDwVT7M7Q5quj-R3sGu5txd0bA6p64uNsBS5d4VmbzeNOQxX8U1n8-9I_FmfHMPQmHJBmYC86CoGe18b3WR27EL08ucj-h0C-2K/s640/anna+depenbusch+in+meistervaal+-+1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Depenbusch will record her new album in a studio, but in a single take and with a small audience. Hence the title, <i>Echtzeit </i>(Real Time).</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<ul>
</ul>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Frank Beckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15289440558518599583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126281543974744253.post-68962996817182065052019-10-24T17:32:00.001-04:002020-12-09T07:06:59.915-05:00Elgar's song of anguish and survival<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKcjIymJuwnidpY607SE7NRk5Xax8puNiTUlkTABE6kcLp_Vo85nAzNtsL_8UzH6ZXhBiAHDNpWw06XB7NCc9RJoRMgiKFIhtRnr9A4xoVgBKSaLeeooiTTfdYNE2Mjt8T5az_Dh65Jsk1/s1600/brinkwells%252B+-+1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKcjIymJuwnidpY607SE7NRk5Xax8puNiTUlkTABE6kcLp_Vo85nAzNtsL_8UzH6ZXhBiAHDNpWw06XB7NCc9RJoRMgiKFIhtRnr9A4xoVgBKSaLeeooiTTfdYNE2Mjt8T5az_Dh65Jsk1/s1600/brinkwells%252B+-+1.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Brinkwells: the cottage the Elgars rented in West Sussex </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><b><br /></b></i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><b>Thoughts on the centenary of Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor, first performed at Queen's Hall in London on October 27, 1919.</b></i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Imagine if <i>Hamlet</i> began with the Prince alone on stage, delivering the words, "To be or not to be . . . " -- no setting of the scene, just one character thinking out loud, leaving us to make what we can of what he says. Edward Elgar does the musical equivalent of that in his Cello Concerto, placing the listener in the middle of things from its first moments, with four insistent chords and then a quick fade into a <i>diminuendo</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">That's not the way most concertos begin. There's usually an extended orchestral introduction, after which the solo instrument makes a carefully stage-managed first appearance. In Dvorak's earlier Cello Concerto, for example, that opening music lasts a full three-and-a-half minutes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZGLztUpIFEolXahXfq4RHxNecTwh3sjzOnsRbNL9ZP3X4YKlA2JwScoWwQhrtlw5khJxmtMdB3uY4YhbI8TsHXV3xjn4tm84iMj_bQdYBpqnKfGiBc7Jivsk9OU7POV-XAAWcI790_zDu/s1600/61532291_2321328161221405_8724835769555877888_o.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="1440" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZGLztUpIFEolXahXfq4RHxNecTwh3sjzOnsRbNL9ZP3X4YKlA2JwScoWwQhrtlw5khJxmtMdB3uY4YhbI8TsHXV3xjn4tm84iMj_bQdYBpqnKfGiBc7Jivsk9OU7POV-XAAWcI790_zDu/s640/61532291_2321328161221405_8724835769555877888_o.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Elgar in London in 1919, the year in which he composed the concerto</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Elgar's abrupt beginning suits this highly concentrated work--about half as long as his Violin Concerto. What follows is a rising arpeggio on the cello that seems to promise some other, emphatic statement. Instead, we hear a subdued lament in 9/8 time, first in the violas, then by the cello and the full orchestra.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Elgar wrote the concerto during the first spring and summer after the First World War, often staying with his wife at a cottage in the south of England. This gently swaying melody is his elegy for all that had been lost--millions of lives, and, with them, faith in a social order that had sent foot soldiers armed with rifles and bayonets to face machine guns and poison gas. The music seems to express both the numbed serenity of grief and the ache within it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">But the second movement brings a darting fantasy for the cello, with all the freedom of a bird in flight. What does this exuberance, which few cellists play without a smile, have to do with the solemn movement we've just heard? It reminds us, perhaps, that any elegy is both a celebration of what has been lost and an affirmation of a survivor's resilience. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In the quiet andante of the third movement, the music breathes a middle-of-the-night atmosphere. The numbness of the first movement's main theme is long gone, and the simple but lovingly shaped melody unfolds with great tenderness.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Elgar marked the main theme of the finale<i> risoluto</i> (resolutely); if he had captioned the movement itself, as Beethoven used to do, he might have said: "Grief goes out into the world." There's a lively dialogue between cellist and orchestra, often in a swaggering mood that evokes the composer's <i>Falstaff.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Eventually the cello retreats into an extended soliloquy, drawing together themes from throughout the work, now imbued with an even greater depth of feeling. Then, suddenly--as sudden as the four chords that began the work--cello and orchestra play eight bars in unison, and the concerto ends. We're left to wonder: does that brusque conclusion express resignation, or defiance?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i> </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The concerto had its first performance </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">in Queen's Hall, London, with cellist Felix Salmond and the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of the composer. C</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">ritic Ernest Newman described it as "the realisation in tone of a fine spirit's lifelong wistful brooding upon the loveliness of the earth." Elgar's own summary was more blunt: "A man's attitude to life."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Generations of cellists have been attracted to the concerto, by the beauty of its themes, by the close kinship among them and by the dramatic way in which they are presented and developed. Pablo Casals, Jacqueline du Pré, Steven Isserlis, Alisa Weilerstein and many others have recorded the work. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Here is a gripping recent performance by Johannes Moser and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Jacek Kaspszyk.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> (Moser has recorded the work for <a href="https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8264896--elgar-tchaikovsky-cello-works">Pentatone</a>.)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/n-4Zl3dC86g/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/n-4Zl3dC86g?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.somm-recordings.com/recording/elgar-remastered/">AUDIO: Elgar's 1928 recording of the concerto with Beatrice Harrison</a></span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7939746--great-cellists-pablo-casals">AUDIO: Pablo Casals' recording with Adrian Boult and the BBC SO </a></span></li>
<li><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/edward-elgar-9780198163664?cc=us&lang=en&#" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The definitive Elgar biography by Jerrold Northrop Moore</span></a></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.elgar.org/9vol32.htm">The new edition of Elgar's scores</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://allegrofilms.com/collections/the-films/products/jacqueline-du-pre-in-portrait-elgar-cello-concerto-the-ghost">Jacqueline du Pré's legendary performance with Daniel Barenboim</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.gramophone.co.uk/feature/elgars-cello-concerto-recommended-recordings">Recommended recordings from Gramophone</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.torial.com/frank.beck/portfolio/417131">How Jean-Quihen Queyras made me rethink the concerto</a></span> </li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large; text-align: center;"> (Photo of Brinkwells by Peter Whitcomb)</span><br />
<style type="text/css">
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #005160}
</style>Frank Beckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15289440558518599583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126281543974744253.post-36148381587479687972019-05-30T23:02:00.007-04:002023-05-31T12:27:59.392-04:00Walt Whitman: 200 Years On<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge4EfmFikoguBLZDTbBimTUImeeKohn5udZSf9Jo1lujtyCwmKFA2mfZWKPUvD8ArEy_e661wxf3TPLNyDliZYtFHS6fFCw35t70t1qqalmkAJDgG0Fh1hvQg8szKNEUTz4NFG9IcDJOfL/s1600/pamplona+choir2%252B+-+1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="406" data-original-width="722" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge4EfmFikoguBLZDTbBimTUImeeKohn5udZSf9Jo1lujtyCwmKFA2mfZWKPUvD8ArEy_e661wxf3TPLNyDliZYtFHS6fFCw35t70t1qqalmkAJDgG0Fh1hvQg8szKNEUTz4NFG9IcDJOfL/s640/pamplona+choir2%252B+-+1.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div>
<span style="color: #555555; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span><span style="color: #555555; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>For the 200th anniversary of the birth of our national poet (May 31, 2019), here are lines from Walt Whitman's 'Song of the Universal', which Norwegian composer Ola Gjielo has selected and set for chorus and orchestra. (You can hear a performance of the work from Spain at the first link below.) Whitman was one of the first writers who made me take poetry seriously, and I'm sure there are more echoes of his verses in my own work than I will ever find.</i></span><br />
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<em><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Come, said the Muse,</span></em></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,</span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Sing me the Universal.</span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In this broad Earth of ours,</span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,</span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Enclosed and safe within its central heart,</span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Nestles the seed Perfection.</span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">By every life a share, or more or less,</span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">None born but it is born—</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">concealed or unconcealed, the seed is waiting.</span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Give me, O God, to sing that thought!</span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Give me—give him or her I love, this quenchless faith</span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In Thy ensemble. Whatever else withheld, withhold not from us</span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space;</span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Health, peace, salvation universal.</span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">All, all for Immortality!</span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Love, like the light, silently wrapping all!</span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Nature’s amelioration blessing all!</span></div>
<div style="clear: both; color: #555555; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The blossoms, fruits of ages—orchards divine and certain;</span></div>
<div style="clear: both; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<div style="color: #555555;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Forms, objects, growths, humanities, to spiritual images ripening.</span><br />
<i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: x-large; text-align: left;"><br /></i>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i style="text-align: left;">Written in 1871, this poem--considerably longer than the lines Gjielo selected--appears at the head of the 'Birds of Passage' section of </i><span style="text-align: left;">Leaves of Grass</span><i style="text-align: left;">. Is this Whitman's most succinct expression of his artistic credo? I think it might be.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #555555;">
</div>
<ul style="color: #555555;">
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmjAyT9_xCI">VIDEO: Coro In Tempore Abesbatza sings Ola Gjeilo's setting of Whitman's words</a></span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/walt-whitman">Whitman exhibition at New York's Morgan Library</a></span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://thewaltwhitmanassociation.org/">Whitman's home in Camden, New Jersey</a></span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/walt-whitman-leaves-of-grass-american-democracy/586045/"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Whitman reminds us what it's like to live in a democracy</span></a></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://literaturzeitschrift.de/walt_whitman_grashalme/">A German tribute on Whitman's 200th birthday</a></span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://olagjeilo.com/"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">More about composer Ola Gjielo</span></a></li>
</ul>
<span style="color: #555555;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ul style="color: #555555;">
</ul>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: #555555; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMGBkz5jXo6l0s4hkcE0WWh4Pgd4JGedPcKWIrZMGWWlZHFnfCjR0Wt8j1tFQdfFXHWUtTcKNC_lr1TDyQh4KulaBb-VOyX_uEwfF7L-UGxU8Aw-RiIdr8SwBvvT-b2Or6IxNZrv6_vuto/s1600/whitman%252B+-+1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="1050" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMGBkz5jXo6l0s4hkcE0WWh4Pgd4JGedPcKWIrZMGWWlZHFnfCjR0Wt8j1tFQdfFXHWUtTcKNC_lr1TDyQh4KulaBb-VOyX_uEwfF7L-UGxU8Aw-RiIdr8SwBvvT-b2Or6IxNZrv6_vuto/s640/whitman%252B+-+1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #555555;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<br />Frank Beckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15289440558518599583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126281543974744253.post-35528198546542634522018-04-17T23:44:00.010-04:002023-02-12T11:59:37.186-05:00Lou Andreas-Salomé: The Audacity to Be Free<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOLMyYGuOaSHbqSRXPdGx6jNx_cphT8KqKXCL-AEPHlWN0GPK_G_TL7ncvSNBArTMR9A00ZMlXuVSXLl8t585vLTi9-OJEvVVpjwO1TFwGp4LOP_MWgcM8ayD2x6F-_lgvaH3ETcTKvg-W/s1600/Fries+in+rain%252B+-+1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOLMyYGuOaSHbqSRXPdGx6jNx_cphT8KqKXCL-AEPHlWN0GPK_G_TL7ncvSNBArTMR9A00ZMlXuVSXLl8t585vLTi9-OJEvVVpjwO1TFwGp4LOP_MWgcM8ayD2x6F-_lgvaH3ETcTKvg-W/s640/Fries+in+rain%252B+-+1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">The story sounds like one of this morning's headlines. A brilliant young woman has a teacher she admires, who offers to be her mentor. She studies with him privately and even moves in with his family, but then discovers he wants to divorce his wife and marry her. This shattering MeToo moment is from <i>Ruth</i>, an 1895 novel by Lou Andreas-Salomé.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">The Russian-born novelist challenged many accepted ideas of thinking, and her books struck a nerve among her mostly female readers. They wrote her emotional letters; some came to visit her at her home in Berlin. Yet t</span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">oday Lou (as she preferred to be called) is known primarily for her friends. A tumultuous summer with Nietzsche led to her writing the first full-length study of his works; by Rilke's own admission, her support made the </span><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Duino Elegies</i><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"> possible; and, under Freud's own tutelage, she became the first female psychoanalyst.</span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Cordula Kablitz-Post's film sets the record straight, establishing Lou as a highly original thinker in her right, with the force of character to live independently in a society that expected women to be subservient. </span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Liv Lisa Fries (above), acclaimed for her performance in the Netflix series </span><i style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Babylon Berlin</i><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">, plays Lou as a rebellious St. Petersburg teenager who dares to read Spinoza but finds her intelligence only makes her more attractive to a predatory male mind.</span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;"><br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/252271457" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="640"></iframe><br />
</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">Katharina Lorenz has the challenge of playing Lou in her prime: Nietzsche called her "by far the smartest person I have ever became acquainted with." From the moment the two meet, at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, Lou sees that Nietzsche (Alexander Scheer), already a well known author, intends to dazzle her. She quickly turns the tables, engaging him and their friend Paul Rée (Philipp Hauß) </span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">in a deliciously funny mock confession.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">Scheer gives us Nietzsche's geniality, as well as his volatility. When he and Lou climb the hills above Lake Orta, debating their future together, there is no question that she is his match, in both wits and will. In fact, their headstrong minds may be too alike; just months later, Lou decides to live with Rée, but eventually marries the Persian scholar Friedrich Carl Andreas (Merab Ninidze).</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">Thirteen years later, Lou meets a 21-year-old art history student named René Maria Rilke (Julius Feldmeier). She rechristens him "Rainer," and they become the closest of confidantes. My one quibble with the script is it does not make clear how closely they stayed in touch after their three-year romance ended; they visited one another and corresponded until Rilke's death in 1926.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi96q14F3UZWX9Lu_p2q4jpBKdlMG4fIFDQPWxsM2ft2V34dLpIsTmSsEtlMLQhv9k2aky9a_3og5owY__k3oCYoCvanPGLEF7iGYKnw_JuKppJQMlXcCIThoEs35MRlR8APLJtZmNuOM-F/s1600/julius+feldmeier%252B+-+1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="610" data-original-width="883" height="442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi96q14F3UZWX9Lu_p2q4jpBKdlMG4fIFDQPWxsM2ft2V34dLpIsTmSsEtlMLQhv9k2aky9a_3og5owY__k3oCYoCvanPGLEF7iGYKnw_JuKppJQMlXcCIThoEs35MRlR8APLJtZmNuOM-F/s640/julius+feldmeier%252B+-+1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">Julius Feldmeier as Rainer Maria Rilke</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">Nicole Heesters plays Lou near the end of her life, confined by ill health to her Göttingen home, yet still changing in ways that let her form a final bond with the young scholar Ernst Pfeiffer (Matthias Lier), who will edit her memoirs.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">The script, by Susanne Hertel and Kablitz-Post, deftly interweaves the story of Lou's earlier life with the new relationship between the elderly writer and the young man who will help keep her legacy alive. </span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">Matthias Schellenberg's nimble camera is equally at home in the elaborate, 19th-century interiors; out on a mountain lake; or following Lou and Paul Rée through the gaslit streets of "Rome" (shot in the oldest part of central Vienna; see the clip).</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">If viewers like this film as much as I did, I hope they will try Lou's fiction. A good place to start is "Before the Awakening," from <i>The Human Family</i>, a short story collection translated by Raleigh Whitinger. Lou's empathetic account of both sides of a failed seduction is the work of an extraordinary and life-enhancing imagination. </span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">Warmly recommended.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsILbLWY1SHFcdvPNGZiLe_xlqIL5gwjikVemmZFNThEEJlUDm9A00YPyDDhxBpUdlmxd2_oXyva3Ss-q7kWPm5IrWqW1SwqKmPHHasVaQSEvfnJwXeS80C6kUPqA6CRFEiljFoyJaGj-8/s1600/LAS+and+Pfeiffer%252B+-+1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsILbLWY1SHFcdvPNGZiLe_xlqIL5gwjikVemmZFNThEEJlUDm9A00YPyDDhxBpUdlmxd2_oXyva3Ss-q7kWPm5IrWqW1SwqKmPHHasVaQSEvfnJwXeS80C6kUPqA6CRFEiljFoyJaGj-8/s640/LAS+and+Pfeiffer%252B+-+1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">Matthias Lier (Erst Pfeiffer) and Nicole Heesters (Lou Andreas-Salomé)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://vimeo.com/ondemand/louthefilm" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">VIDEO: Watch or download the film on Vimeo</a></span></li><li><a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781640141018/annelieses-house/"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">The first English translation of Andreas-Salomé's novel "Das Haus"</span></a><br /></li>
<li><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AtOMIvoUywD6jZQlWujBkHzM8KTLCjzf/view?usp=sharing"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">Reviews of the film from Europe (in English translation)</span></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.diehoren.com/2015/07/a-genius-of-inspiration-heads-for-screen.html" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">A behind-the-scenes look at the film</span></a></li>
<li><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9780803259522">Lou Andreas-Salomé short stories: "The Human Family"</a></span></li><li><a href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lou_Andreas-Salom%C3%A9"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Notable thoughts from the author on Wikiquote</span></a><br /></li><li><a href="http://www.medienedition.de/index.php?id=21"><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">The uniform edition of Lou Andreas-Salomé's works</span></a></li>
</ul>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Frank Beckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15289440558518599583noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126281543974744253.post-3815947662944398522016-08-21T20:19:00.007-04:002023-09-24T13:51:40.582-04:00One woman's vision<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGGAkSmVsCfOSKLOdOt_S-wbJu9nYMm8l1unyUC_Te6w7M0imWyCkK84WlumOq0WTXdG5QMMlp9wcH4FLfmbCzVUdHoczcpHNQ2rNHzg86eZjWSXIc2oWkly3YJ9rJ2w7Q_3L5U2I2PY9Y/s1600/Paula_cropped+2+-+1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGGAkSmVsCfOSKLOdOt_S-wbJu9nYMm8l1unyUC_Te6w7M0imWyCkK84WlumOq0WTXdG5QMMlp9wcH4FLfmbCzVUdHoczcpHNQ2rNHzg86eZjWSXIc2oWkly3YJ9rJ2w7Q_3L5U2I2PY9Y/w674-h340/Paula_cropped+2+-+1.jpg" width="674" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Carla Juri as painter Paula Modersohn-Becker</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Christian Schwochow's <i>Paula </i>is the story of Paula Modersohn-Becker, the first female painter to have a <a href="http://www.museen-boettcherstrasse.de/english/">museum</a> devoted entirely to her work. However, I must admit that, before I saw the film, most of what I knew about Modersohn-Becker had to do with her relationship with Rainer Maria Rilke.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The poet met her at Germany's <a href="http://www.worpswede-touristik.de/">Worpswede</a> artist colony in 1900 and quickly fell in love. Becker, however, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">was engaged to Otto Modersohn, and Rilke became attached to Paula's friend, sculptor Clara Westhoff. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Both couples soon married, but Modersohn-Becker and Rilke remained confidantes until her death in 1907. The two </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">conducted an extensive correspondence; Eric Torgersen's <a href="https://nupress.northwestern.edu/9780810118195/dear-friend/">account</a> of their relationship, published by Northwestern University Press, includes extensive excerpts from their letters</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Schwochow's film focuses on Modersohn-Becker's struggle to paint in a world dominated by male painters, critics and art dealers. After mastering classical drawing and painting techniques, she forged a uniquely modernist style. Many of her canvases are portraits of subjects who suggest they have secrets, without disclosing them. One frequent subject was herself: Modersohn-Becker was the first female artist to </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">create a nude self-portrait. The New Yorker has called her "<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/paula-modersohn-becker-modern-paintings-missing-piece">modern painting's missing piece</a>".</span></span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnTftbXJ2SpkTYEL1musA01kTac4wASIWkU8uyuEPAZNR73iByiYEQAPF2fnEIIh4nVuAPLARDINVIDeRnDbEiSHeqp5C7DT_AYDuQChyHMRcdv8PFZJOekVHgykI2GcUkB6ZPG6BwlkBS/s1600/Portrait+of+Lee+Hoetger+1906_cropped+-+1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnTftbXJ2SpkTYEL1musA01kTac4wASIWkU8uyuEPAZNR73iByiYEQAPF2fnEIIh4nVuAPLARDINVIDeRnDbEiSHeqp5C7DT_AYDuQChyHMRcdv8PFZJOekVHgykI2GcUkB6ZPG6BwlkBS/s640/Portrait+of+Lee+Hoetger+1906_cropped+-+1.jpg" width="515" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Paula Modersohn-Becker's portrait of Lee Hoetger, 1906</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Swiss actress Carla Juri has the film's leading role. She won the Swiss Film Prize for Best Actress for her role in <i>Eine wen iig</i> (Someone like me) in 2012 and appeared in the 2013 <i>Wetlands</i>. She also performed in Peter Greenaway's <i>Walking to Paris</i>, to be released next year.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Paula</i> was a labor of love that screenwriters Stefan Kolditz and Stephen Suschke worked on together for nearly three decades. Kolditz was one of the writers for the acclaimed German miniseries, <i>Our Mothers, Our Fathers</i>; </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Suschke is a noted theater director. Director Christian Schwochow is best known for his 2013 film, <i>West</i>, a Cold War drama that The Guardian found "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/14/west-review-berlin-east-germany-christian-schwochow-julia-franck">intriguing</a>", comparing it with <i>The Lives of Others</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Strangely enough, this is the second film in a year in which Rilke is portrayed. The first was Cordula Kablitz-Post's Lou Andreas-Salome, which I reviewed for <a href="https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/cultural-cross-sections/love-lou">World Literature Today</a>. The accounts of Rilke in the two films dovetail nicely: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Kablitz-Post's focuses on Rilke in Munich and Berlin from 1897 until 1900; Schwochow's picks up his relationship with Modersohn-Becker about that time. (Julius Feldmeier plays Rilke in the first film; Joel Basman portrays the poet in the second.)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Paula </i>had its premiere at the 2016 Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland and opened in German cinemas in December 2016. It was issued on BluRay/DVD in Europe in May 2017.</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILFHnNQxn78">VIDEO: Trailer for "Paula" with English subtitles</a></span></li>
<li><a href="http://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?item_id=9761;hilite=paula%20modersohn-becker"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">My review for PN Review (see item 7 of News & Notes)</span></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.museen-boettcherstrasse.de/english/"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum in Paris</span></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.kunstkopie.de/a/modersohn-becker-paula.html"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Examples of Modersohn-Becker's work from Kunstkopie</span></a></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300185300/paula-modersohn-becker/">Diane Radycki's biography of the painter</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://variety.com/2016/film/reviews/paula-review-1201832190/">Guy Lodge's review of the film from Variety</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.pandorafilm.com/filmography/paula.html">More about the movie from Pandora Films</a></span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<ul>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixahU6lmnO6nEWyCAWMmgtWvdS6fMxiB0JapiS5wyZ7BRorjg3ZmqwY0sXxVPgLDLnmkLT_7hW7ZinO-QAtN69D9OsmyYVJ4Lkh3Wo-0SxZ8TKusG6W1DQ7_BEE1Rfv7-VeLLHvqu4kbO3/s1600/Paula+and+Elsberth_1903_cropped+-+1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="462" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixahU6lmnO6nEWyCAWMmgtWvdS6fMxiB0JapiS5wyZ7BRorjg3ZmqwY0sXxVPgLDLnmkLT_7hW7ZinO-QAtN69D9OsmyYVJ4Lkh3Wo-0SxZ8TKusG6W1DQ7_BEE1Rfv7-VeLLHvqu4kbO3/w669-h462/Paula+and+Elsberth_1903_cropped+-+1.jpg" width="669" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Paula Modersohn-Becker and Elisbeth Modersohn in Worpswede, 1903</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Frank Beckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15289440558518599583noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126281543974744253.post-41514273700605958142016-01-08T16:27:00.010-05:002023-06-27T13:09:06.179-04:00What kind of performer was Rilke?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-6fO6U5z9I3FWftM0h4l9uMxnal8pzlmh4PmyKjaV72o6XWO0AX5TQNJxwel0KN0Rnqj1ydfncdDU_bIIlobJ7Od8JUmIsMWkCxiNGdR9DIiX8wpmVz_GqUlJrMhODMouYF4NVgAYd_o0/s1600/rilke%252Bpiano_crop%252Bcolor.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-6fO6U5z9I3FWftM0h4l9uMxnal8pzlmh4PmyKjaV72o6XWO0AX5TQNJxwel0KN0Rnqj1ydfncdDU_bIIlobJ7Od8JUmIsMWkCxiNGdR9DIiX8wpmVz_GqUlJrMhODMouYF4NVgAYd_o0/s640/rilke%252Bpiano_crop%252Bcolor.jpg" width="563" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">We have audio recordings of Tolstoy and Tennyson--even one of Robert Browning. But no recordings of Rainer Maria Rilke are known to exist, although he lived until 1926. In a letter written in April of that year to Dieter Bassermann, Rilke noted that the phonograph could contribute "to a new, orderly sense of responsibility toward the <i>reading aloud</i> of a poem (by which alone its whole existence appears)."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">We do, however, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">have a vivid description of Rilke as a performer. Here is Marie von Thurn and Taxis' account of a reading he gave at her home, Lautschin Castle, in Bohemia in July 1911:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Rilke read in a very characteristic manner, always standing up, in a voice capable of infinite modulations, which sometimes rose to an amazingly sonorous volume, in a strange, singing tone that strongly stressed the rhythm.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>It was entirely different from anything one had ever heard--startling at first, then wonderfully moving. I have never heard verse spoken more solemnly and, at the same time, with greater simplicity; one could have listened to him forever.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>It was remarkable what long pauses he made. Then he would slowly bow his head, almost closing his heavy eyelids, and one could <u>hear</u> the silence, as one hears the pauses of a Beethoven sonata.</i></span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This letter is quoted in the 1949 book, <i>Rilke: Man and Poet,</i> by Nora Wydenbruck, which is well worth hunting down. Wydenbruck (1885-1962) was an Austrian-British author and painter, now best known for her German translations of <i>Four Quartets</i> and several of Eliot's plays. In 1948, she published one of the first English translations of the Duino Elegies.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Today recordings of Rilke's poetry and prose are available in many languages. Some of my favorites are those by the German actor Sven Gortz</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">. He may not emphasize the meters as much as Rilke himself apparently did, but he has a fine sense of the human drama in poems like "An Archaic Torso of Apollo". </span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h8rKmkU5x_GDAkCouJa1LWWEjdHq1oXd/view?usp=sharing">AUDIO: Sven Görtz reads "Archaischer Torso Apollos" (An Archaic Torso of Apollo)</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.diehoren.com/2013/01/rilkes-encounter-with-ancient-greece-in.html">An English translation of the poem</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.diehoren.com/2018/04/lou-andreas-salome-audacity-to-be-free.html">VIDEO: A new film about Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salomé</a></span></li>
<li><a href="http://www.diehoren.com/2016/05/the-urgent-music-of-duino-elegies.html"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">AUDIO: The urgent music of the Duino Elegies</span></a></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.zamekloucen.cz/en/">Lautschin Castle is now an upscale hotel</a></span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<ul>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnlNuStjEjC_CRQ_d0pAbCPbIfKZA7U_HBTxjCDVpj6k8yGxHskiy_6FnWFawV2VUKnJYhDEeS3DahWYLQOplNic7Bhg-ph5ql9uNOV-PT2yIG7cTzwEfNyep58GyeVJYM4jMb1fdAbaJ5/s1600/loucen16.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnlNuStjEjC_CRQ_d0pAbCPbIfKZA7U_HBTxjCDVpj6k8yGxHskiy_6FnWFawV2VUKnJYhDEeS3DahWYLQOplNic7Bhg-ph5ql9uNOV-PT2yIG7cTzwEfNyep58GyeVJYM4jMb1fdAbaJ5/s640/loucen16.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Lautschin, now in the Czech Republic, as it is today (Photo: Radio Prague)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Frank Beckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15289440558518599583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126281543974744253.post-90741949937271923132015-07-18T06:15:00.004-04:002024-02-06T11:11:04.338-05:00A "genius of inspiration" heads for the screen<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5oWxNd_uHb8PQEM91b-xUOE5O17N7U_IDkLTdEQ5MeI8l8x8DEYnbX39RkuGm1YCvaruG6dnMuy14HG_1Mz1hJ2glybd4BbE7pdX721FXtdaUVvMnR10c3LZgQJnoi4v7XIJfnCV4pGBa/s1600/LAS+2_crop+-+1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5oWxNd_uHb8PQEM91b-xUOE5O17N7U_IDkLTdEQ5MeI8l8x8DEYnbX39RkuGm1YCvaruG6dnMuy14HG_1Mz1hJ2glybd4BbE7pdX721FXtdaUVvMnR10c3LZgQJnoi4v7XIJfnCV4pGBa/s1600/LAS+2_crop+-+1.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Katharina Lorenz as Lou Andreas-Salomé and Julius Feldmeier as Rilke</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Was Lou Andreas-Salomé a writer or a muse, a feminist or a femme fatale? Perhaps Julia Vickers, one of her biographers, evokes her elusive spirit best when she calls Lou "a genius of </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">inspiration."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Moviegoers will see the extraordinary extent of her motivating genius in a new film by Cordula Kablitz-Post, <i>Lou</i> <i>Andreas-Salomé</i>. (I reviewed the film for <a href="http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/love-lou">World Literature Today</a> in June 2016.) Lou--the name she preferred to be addressed by--not only guided and aided the creative process; she had an uncanny instinct for where her help would do the most good.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Nietzsche said "only after knowing her was I ripe for my Zarathustra." Decades later Freud, who sometimes referred patients to Salomé, told her, "I strike up a melody, usually a very simple one; you supply the higher octaves to it. I separate one thing from another; you combine what was separated into a higher unity." Her role in Rilke's life was even greater, continuing for more than two decades.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kablitz-Post's film, which was released in Europe in 2016 and will open in US theaters in the Spring of 2018, traces the whole course of Lou's life from </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">her childhood in the German colony of St. Petersburg to her final years in Goettingen, Germany. </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In the restlessly creative years before the First World War, she bridged the worlds of philosophy, psychology and literature, making contributions to each one. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Her </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">ability to guide and inspire came from an extraordinary intelligence and an unshakable sense of her own autonomy, which freed her to encounter others--whoever they were--on an equal footing. When she was just 21, she set down how she meant to live:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>What I shall quite certainly do is make my own life according to myself, whatever may come of it. In this I have no principle to represent, but something much more wonderful--something that is inside oneself and is hot with sheer life, and rejoices and wants to get out.</i></span></blockquote>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSpvydRfoVBTnmCowSUCQoO7XotxgPo8yY30P9PjZsw_FKyX0QZ0TIcKf6a_rW6pR3Nn4thxowFm5pjBYa68VMipsDiBwo_zidsfWH0Yg4HFNgH0bUANsFudrq3SuqMhPfwDUqNsDmvNru/s1600/LAS+3_crop+-+1+%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSpvydRfoVBTnmCowSUCQoO7XotxgPo8yY30P9PjZsw_FKyX0QZ0TIcKf6a_rW6pR3Nn4thxowFm5pjBYa68VMipsDiBwo_zidsfWH0Yg4HFNgH0bUANsFudrq3SuqMhPfwDUqNsDmvNru/s640/LAS+3_crop+-+1+%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The film recreates Bohemian life in the Berlin of the 1880s</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<b style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lighting the way to the<i> Duino Elegies</i></span></b><br />
<b style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></b>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Lou's most celebrated relationship was with Rainer Maria Rilke. When they met in May 1897, she was a 36-year-old author working on her fifth novel and married to philologist Friedrich Carl Andreas. Rilke, at 21, was an art history student visiting Munich from Prague.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Their friendship quickly became a love affair, although Lou had never had a sexual relationship before. (Believing that sex placed women in a subordinate role, she had married Andreas on the condition the marriage not be consummated.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The difference in their ages may have seemed natural to her: she and Andreas were 15 years apart, her own parents 16. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">When Lou and Rilke met, he had </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">published three poetry collections, but those poems were rather cautious and conventional. Now, he wrote Lou, he would do better:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Songs of longing! . . . But they will be different from how they used to be, these songs. For I have turned and found longing at my side, and I have looked into her eyes, and now she leads me with a steady hand.</span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Lou and Rilke were lovers for three years and stayed close until his death in 1926: she played a crucial role in his development as a writer. Rilke was prone to many doubts and fears, and it is hard to imagine how he could have written the <i>Duino Elegies</i> and <i>Sonnets to Orpheus </i>without Lou's guidance and support.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg74jnfsjsS3XPvzwQEluVpERD5AAET21sdXMTNAvyjlVkgldQ2HE5xH2fj1nPiIem-L_cT3mkuUlooHO9FK7j8-zq0lQzD3FwXu9D6O3z3CxklkVg7ym_cCff9Ogsz01z35QKqrPa4ztoG/s1600/Lou-Andreas-Salome_antique_full.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg74jnfsjsS3XPvzwQEluVpERD5AAET21sdXMTNAvyjlVkgldQ2HE5xH2fj1nPiIem-L_cT3mkuUlooHO9FK7j8-zq0lQzD3FwXu9D6O3z3CxklkVg7ym_cCff9Ogsz01z35QKqrPa4ztoG/s640/Lou-Andreas-Salome_antique_full.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Lou Andreas-Salome in 1897, the year she met Rilke</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>A leading role shared three ways</b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Kablitz-Post has chosen three actresses to portray Lou in the three stages of her life. In the central portion of the film, </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Katharina Lorenz, who's had leading roles in plays by Shakespeare, Schiller and Albee, plays Lou as a young woman.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Liv Lisa Fries, who won the Bavarian Film Award for Best Young Actress last year, has the role of Lou as a teenager. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Nicole Heester, a veteran of stage and screen, plays the writer in her final years. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The cast includes Julius Feldmeier as Rilke, Alexander Scheer as Nietzsche and Harald Schrott at Freud. (See the link below for photos of the principal cast.)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Some film biographies rely on an existing interpretation of their subject. Milos Forman's <i>Amadeus, </i>for example, is adapted from the play by Peter Schaffer. Kablitz-Post has based her film on her own extensive research, which began many years ago.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"When I was 17," the director told me, "I read the first biography of Lou Andreas-Salomé, written by H.F. Peters, and it fascinated me. She was one of those first emancipated women who lived 100 years ahead of her time.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"She never accepted a 'no' from family or society regarding her plans for her freedom and choice of education. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">She was one of the first women who studied in Zurich in 1881--the first European university that accepted women. For me, she has always been a role model."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwPBeS72QBS8k5FLUOCq6J0hTSheKGuM5Vxy_oVnzFDo7d2_iFVloYdZ7erYnDguJvuaodsDUx9jWpiFcrAoKjQgRy-r4i_knmtK-9VsScbQuLBhZ1UKtCIRFf3q3sX_A-ODeE0u95Ybrh/s1600/Liv+Lisa+Fries+with+Cordula+-+1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwPBeS72QBS8k5FLUOCq6J0hTSheKGuM5Vxy_oVnzFDo7d2_iFVloYdZ7erYnDguJvuaodsDUx9jWpiFcrAoKjQgRy-r4i_knmtK-9VsScbQuLBhZ1UKtCIRFf3q3sX_A-ODeE0u95Ybrh/s640/Liv+Lisa+Fries+with+Cordula+-+1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Liv Lisa Fries, who plays Lou Andreas-Salome as a teenager, and director Cordula Kablitz-Post on location in Lower Saxony (Photo: Janine Kluge)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b>Writing fresh dialogue for familiar voices </b></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Kablitz-Post wrote the film's script in collaboration with Susanne Hertel. One of their challenges was writing dialogue for historical figures who already have strong voices in print. Another was adjusting their 19th-century diction so that today's audiences could understand them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"Lou's German is very old-fashioned and complicated," Hertel explained. "We had to 'translate' her quotes into a more modern--of course, not too-modern--German."</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In December of the year Rilke met Lou, he published a new book of poems, entitled <i>Advent</i>. This one ("<i>Weisst du,</i> <i>ich will mich schleichen</i>") is </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">a slender poem, but the way it links autonomy with intimacy sums up what that momentous year had meant to both of them:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>You know I'd like to slip</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>from the loudly buzzing room</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>when the first pale stars,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>high above the darkened oaks,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>catch fire.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>I want to make my way</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>through paths that few can find</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>in the hushed evening meadows</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>--and with no dream but this:</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>you're there too.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7bl4x-JGMzOpkmXpfwbnNsfN1j-ZG8gScAwzCgcuwc3HZFj8vl4os6EmCKxHz5Zi9kMjxybvEb4P7Ypct9nIYSRlvyFexNR9zb3p4OWJcwFdDF7piJcW7IPOzEgcDtWXryCBMgQNF-BH5/s1600/312838814-0c054acf-771a-4162-9dd7-294c41cb80a9-PEa6.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="412" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7bl4x-JGMzOpkmXpfwbnNsfN1j-ZG8gScAwzCgcuwc3HZFj8vl4os6EmCKxHz5Zi9kMjxybvEb4P7Ypct9nIYSRlvyFexNR9zb3p4OWJcwFdDF7piJcW7IPOzEgcDtWXryCBMgQNF-BH5/s640/312838814-0c054acf-771a-4162-9dd7-294c41cb80a9-PEa6.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">On location in Wrisbergholzer (L to R): the film's director, Cordula Kablitz-Post; camera operator Matthias Schellenberg; Matthias Lier (Ernst Pfeiffer) and Nicole Heesters (Lou) (Photo: Meyfarth)</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"> </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQBm7Oj2jeU">VIDEO: Trailer for international release</a></span></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e722D0mnxnw&t=73s"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">VIDEO: Trailer for US release</span></a></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/cultural-cross-sections/love-lou">Review of the film at World Literature Today</a></span></li>
<li><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AtOMIvoUywD6jZQlWujBkHzM8KTLCjzf/view?usp=sharing"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Reviews from the European press</span></a></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_KR4m2nl7cMdDBQZnZwOUw5d00/view?usp=sharing">Detailed summary of the film's plot</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://shop.neuegalerie.org/products/rilke-and-andreas-salome-a-love-story-in-letters"><i>Rilke and Andreas-Salome: A Love Story in Letters</i> from W.W. Norton</a></span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Lou's letter translated by Angela Livingston, from <i>Salomé: Her Life and Work</i> (Gordon Fraser, 1984), p. 36. Rilke's letter translated by Edward Snow and Michael Winkler, from <i>Rilke and</i> <i>Andreas-Salomé:</i> <i>A Love Story in</i> <i>Letters</i> (W.W. Norton, 2008), p. 7. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rilke's poem translated by Frank Beck.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
Frank Beckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15289440558518599583noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126281543974744253.post-20189437202799735802015-03-20T10:58:00.012-04:002023-03-20T20:51:30.868-04:00Ludwig Uhland's love letter to Spring<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1WSgLEwE_vtttzCRf1cULBa65woW0OtQfkERJqHQpMmPZneF-4wrGOOU1PAl8S2eYRdMzC4eTXEs2jQqBi7zdW3TCzXNry2QuzIWtK00_TaB5Cq1uEGRGGR9EAQPOQs7j2pljXe4MRNmY/s1600/spring-flowers-Frankfurt-Germany-Jutta-Weise.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1WSgLEwE_vtttzCRf1cULBa65woW0OtQfkERJqHQpMmPZneF-4wrGOOU1PAl8S2eYRdMzC4eTXEs2jQqBi7zdW3TCzXNry2QuzIWtK00_TaB5Cq1uEGRGGR9EAQPOQs7j2pljXe4MRNmY/s1600/spring-flowers-Frankfurt-Germany-Jutta-Weise.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>To celebrate the season, here’s my translation of Ludwig Uhland's </i><span style="line-height: 1.2em;">Frühlingsglaube<i> ('A Springtime Faith'), first published in 1813:</i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The gentle winds are taking flight:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">They drift and rustle day and
night,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Stirring life in every lane.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Oh, fresher air and skies that part!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The time for fear is past, my heart!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Now each and every thing must
change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The world grows finer day by day,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">And what may happen none can say,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">So widely do blossoms range.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The deepest valley turns to leaf!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">So now, my heart, forget your grief!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Now each and every thing must
change.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">During his lifetime, Ludwig Uhland was one of the most popular German-language poets, as well as a widely respected literary scholar and a political leader during the German states' transition to nationhood. In the recent edition of his work from Klöpfer and Meyer, a selection of his speeches appears side-by-side with his lyric poetry.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMWYWhoPVL_6fKRAL3WGPz3hCzWH2gn0sDPcono0ZGCjcHR033ScMkLZg1ciY_ac07vdTf8JBXiQ7fMSq8Du2lbfxBY7th0-W7wHYd0bUW8doLShtaT0idA7y4KFiOZRRg_y1vQVZM6N62/s1600/uhland+lyrik+und+prosa.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMWYWhoPVL_6fKRAL3WGPz3hCzWH2gn0sDPcono0ZGCjcHR033ScMkLZg1ciY_ac07vdTf8JBXiQ7fMSq8Du2lbfxBY7th0-W7wHYd0bUW8doLShtaT0idA7y4KFiOZRRg_y1vQVZM6N62/s1600/uhland+lyrik+und+prosa.JPG" width="243" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">If Uhland's verse seems familiar to us as speakers of English, it's because he was a major influence on Longfellow, who spent an extended period in Germany in his late twenties, studying the language and reading the latest poetry. In addition, we still encounter Uhland's German directly, through the settings of his poems by Schubert, Brahms and other composers. (Elgar set Uhland's poems too, but he used translations by Longfellow.)</span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Uhland was born in 1787 in the old university town of </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-align: center;">Tübingen, near Stuttgart, where his father's family had been scholars for several generations. He studied law and philology, but, sent to Paris to learn the Napoleonic Code, he devoted much of his time to reading medieval manuscripts at the French National Library instead. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-align: center;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-align: center;">Medieval</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-align: center;"> literature of the Middle Ages became a lifelong interest of his, along with a love of German folk songs. </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-align: center;">Both helped shape his poetry, which at its best has a vigorous simplicity. If his work has come to seem old-fashioned since his death in 1862, its </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large; text-align: center;">musicality and depth of feeling can still move us today. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In bringing Uhland's poem into English, I wanted to replicate his use of rhyme as closely as possible. That required altering part of the meaning in line 4, changing <i>neuer Klang</i> ('newer sounds') to 'skies that part' -- a substitution suitable to the context.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I followed the guidance of Boris Pasternak, who translated much of Shakespeare into Russian. Pasternak felt that, when necessary, a translator should take liberties with individual lines in order to maintain a poet's integrity of thought. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Here is Uhland’s poem in German:</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Die linden Lüfte sind erwacht,<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Sie säuseln und weben Tag und
Nacht,<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Sie schaffen an allen Enden.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>O frischer Duft, o neuer Klang!<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Nun, armes Herze, sei nicht bang!<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Nun muss sich alles, alles
wenden.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Die Welt wird schöner mit jedem
Tag,<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Man weiß nicht, was noch werden
mag,<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Das Blühen will nicht enden.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Es blüht das fernste, tiefste
Tal:<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Nun, armes Herz, vergiss der
Qual!<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Nun muss sich alles, alles
wenden.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqGFISLCZKa1PtrWUbNEpSPlAdNepQoI7WzIxTsYHh9D4VkgQdYPcbzWjfPh50vO0ZG54JIaVdwQ95liFzjJ_3uTFZXAVaEZQ5xvklLwwAljJvCQkCTWz3WMEQVyyGydQ4vkPjrIqvDNGG/s1600/uhland+geburthaus.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="464" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqGFISLCZKa1PtrWUbNEpSPlAdNepQoI7WzIxTsYHh9D4VkgQdYPcbzWjfPh50vO0ZG54JIaVdwQ95liFzjJ_3uTFZXAVaEZQ5xvklLwwAljJvCQkCTWz3WMEQVyyGydQ4vkPjrIqvDNGG/s1600/uhland+geburthaus.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The house in Tübingen where Uhland was born on April 26, 1787.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ul style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I19KCWE_ijU">'Fruhlingsglaube' read by Martin Feifel</a></span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_WMgEu63FA">Schubert's song setting performed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore</a></span></li>
<li style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/dentzien-ludwig-uhland">More about Uhland from the Robbins Digital Library</a></span></li>
</ul>
<div style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Top photograph by Jutta Weise</span></div>
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
</div>
Frank Beckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15289440558518599583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126281543974744253.post-29564426903099070762015-02-06T23:12:00.003-05:002022-11-11T16:08:29.332-05:00The heart of a melancholy optimist<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9e-AMMonDAIAeYxZkgiDk3CIgqB8PNWAdaKJ1sR281ihhda1NkDXBSDtO9KFRLbHjL7GQH8z4eZX8Z-N0Hj6Hu-4FooqVTkT7NGs5vrcIoJ0oI676MqPzKJypUPr2eEQdfW3F1st3unkQ/s1600/anna+depenbusch+with+coffee+cup.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9e-AMMonDAIAeYxZkgiDk3CIgqB8PNWAdaKJ1sR281ihhda1NkDXBSDtO9KFRLbHjL7GQH8z4eZX8Z-N0Hj6Hu-4FooqVTkT7NGs5vrcIoJ0oI676MqPzKJypUPr2eEQdfW3F1st3unkQ/s1600/anna+depenbusch+with+coffee+cup.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span>Why listen to a pop song in a language you don't know? For the same reasons you might listen to a French or Italian opera: to hear memorable melodies and savor the lyrics--with the help of a translation, of course.</span><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Besides, foreign songwriters sometimes have a point-of-view you won't find at home, and Hamburg's Anna Depenbusch is a case in point. Her songs are full of surprises, and full of feeling, too - sometimes contradictory feelings. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">"<i>Heimat</i>" ("Home"</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">), one of the first songs of hers I heard, is a prime example, somehow expressing both affection and resignation: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>I've belonged here so long,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>whether I like it or not.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>I've belonged here so long--</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>yes, I have little choice,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>and it's got me,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>no matter where I am.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Set to a warm, jazz-inflected melody, the lyrics keep their conflicting emotions in suspension, so that none invalidates the other. How does that play out in performance? You can watch Depenbusch perform <a href="http://lyrics.diehoren.com/2015/04/home.html">the song</a> on YouTube and see for yourself. At the link, I've included a translation of the lyrics.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large; text-align: center;">Born in Hamburg in 1977, the songwriter describes herself as "a melancholy optimist," and that may explain the emotional cross currents that make her songs so interesting. She counts Rufus Wainwright and Edith Piaf among her influences, but the German cabaret tradition is clearly part of the mix as well.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2ToNypV5xL9DvhO4vQ6D0jaXKq3dGwOyNJ9kv3MyzfEHVuvKXITCmivU1kBGTrvXpigWK6mZU_GaxPfZexX8ytndzkb3dkKMpyc1hZ5Fr5mFvzEX2CgBqP0PgoMTefwVB-UIBt1SApT07/s1600/anna+depenbusch.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2ToNypV5xL9DvhO4vQ6D0jaXKq3dGwOyNJ9kv3MyzfEHVuvKXITCmivU1kBGTrvXpigWK6mZU_GaxPfZexX8ytndzkb3dkKMpyc1hZ5Fr5mFvzEX2CgBqP0PgoMTefwVB-UIBt1SApT07/s1600/anna+depenbusch.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Depenbusch starting singing in Hamburg nightclubs as a teenager. By the time she was 24, she'd performed with a number of bands but drove a vegetable truck to make ends meet. Then she dropped everything and went off to Iceland to write.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; text-align: center;">She came home with a batch of moody songs that appeared on her first CD, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i style="text-align: center;">Ins Gesicht</i><span style="text-align: center;"> (In the Face), released by Rintintin in 2005. </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That album's success led to a contract with Sony, who issued </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Die Mathematik der Anna Depenbusch</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> in 2011, followed later that year with another album, featuring "unplugged" versions of many of the same songs and video performances of some older ones.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">One of the best of these is "Tango," which deftly plays off a listener's expectations. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The chorus might make you think you were listening to any number of conventional love songs:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>So kiss me now like never before;</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>sing a sweet song in my ear;</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>love me till the morning comes;</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>then fly me over the horizon.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">But the next lines paint an alarming picture of this "romance," as the need for love turns into desperation and denial. The singer's <a href="http://lyrics.diehoren.com/2015/04/tango.html">delivery</a> makes it all seem inevitable:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Bite me firmly on the neck;</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>rip my best dress off my back;</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>lick my hurt and pain away,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>and break my heart in two.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Depenbusch's most recent album, the 2012 <i>S</i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>ommer aus</i> <i>Papier </i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">(<i>Summer of Paper</i>) has a more upbeat feel, and Sony promoted it with an elaborate <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShPb6zPp6KE">music video</a>. One of the most inventive tracks is "Benjamin," about a woman who learns that the sound of her ex-lover's name coming from the next apartment can be hard to take. (See the link below.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">As I think you'll see from the clips I've posted, Depenbusch is as skillful a performer as she is a songwriter. Last summer she gave <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nr9bi0iLXE">compelling performances</a> at several music festivals in Germany, drawing from all of her recorded work.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This fall she was back in the studio, working on new material, and I'm eager to see what she comes up with. In the meantime, here's Depenbusch singing the opening verses of <i>"</i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJCpaHPmsJk">Summer of Paper</a>", a celebration of the vital role songs play in our lives, no matter what language we sing them in:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>I build myself a summer</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>of shiny colored paper;</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>I set it up in winter</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>before the window freezes</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>so everyone can see it,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>there inside the door.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>And, for all those still in snow,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>I make gloves of paper, too.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Because the feeling</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>burns on the skin,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>just as it was</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>and so familiar.</i></span><br />
<br />
<ul>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://lyrics.diehoren.com/2015/04/benjamin.html">VIDEO: What's in a name? "Benjamin" with translation</a></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPv5NXuOiRg">VIDEO: Depenbusch adapts Billy Joel's "Always a Woman</a>"</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBkzegc6Lrg">VIDEO: 2013 German TV broadcast - ZDF@bauhaus</a></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://musictonic.com/music/Anna+Depenbusch#v=Evh-qO9mVOk">VIDEO: More clips on Musictonic</a></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://lyrics.diehoren.com/">More Depenbusch lyrics in German and English</a></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/de/artist/anna-depenbusch/id252108763">Anna Depenbusch on iTunes</a></span></li>
</ul>
<br />Frank Beckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15289440558518599583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126281543974744253.post-59948098810998769602014-10-26T22:45:00.010-04:002022-10-26T23:10:35.491-04:00What have we learned from Dylan Thomas?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0LF4WJlsra7gAT7y7fv6FlceypWwPMPzPug5uQYP_jMY3IXf6dN_gEuWkdcJUO93O1V1KF61UPJm0ghKZNqBW7ddii3SVozWVse6OX4GudkcML2amYYGch3nV18IkXbqq9oyCwrLGjV6q/s1600/dylan+thomas.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="363" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0LF4WJlsra7gAT7y7fv6FlceypWwPMPzPug5uQYP_jMY3IXf6dN_gEuWkdcJUO93O1V1KF61UPJm0ghKZNqBW7ddii3SVozWVse6OX4GudkcML2amYYGch3nV18IkXbqq9oyCwrLGjV6q/w681-h363/dylan+thomas.jpg" width="681" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Dylan Thomas in Swansea at the age of 23</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">When I started reading Dylan Thomas, the only real poetry I </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">knew was Shakespeare's. I was a teenager who loved the lyrics of Alan Jay Lerner and the Beatles, and my girl friend had just introduced me to the songs of Bob Dylan. I thought maybe a look at the Welsh poet's work would help me understand some of the more opaque images in Dylan's songbook. So </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I found Thomas's Collected Poems at the public library and went straight to the beginning:</span></div><div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>I see the boys of summer in their ruin</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Lay the gold tithings barren,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils;</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>There in their heat the winter floods</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Of frozen love they fetch their girls,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>And drown the cargoed apples in their tides.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I had never seen language like his before. Thomas's elliptical statements made his lines sound contemporary, but his reliance on words with Germanic roots ("cargoed" the sole exception here) made his work ancient-sounding, bardic, elemental. I flipped through the book, searching for more lines with the same resonance--that feeling of inevitability-- and quickly found them:</span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The force that drives the green fuse through the flower . . .</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">If I were tickled by the rub of love . . .</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>The hand that signed the paper felled a city . . .</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I couldn't know it then, but I had already encountered Thomas's poetic DNA in those first half-dozen lines: sex, the sea, the seasons, the abundance of life and the nearness of death. But aren't these the topics of most poets? Yes, but here they seemed more immediate, and their music was irresistible.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Like many young Americans of my generation, I hadn't thought poetry could speak to us anymore--certainly not with the force of fiction and film. Thomas showed me that it could, and I was driven by a curiosity to find out where his poetry sprang from. I read his prose, his plays, his letters and the many biographies and memoirs.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">At the same time, Thomas's extraordinary recordings introduced me to the poets he most admired: Hopkins, Hardy, Yeats and others. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">They were all writers who used compelling rhythms, but they had something more unusual in common: they savored the finest nuances of the spoken word, and they reached for rhymes with all the inventiveness of a dreamer. So Thomas was more than an inspiration; he was an education.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">When I began writing poetry myself, my work was too much like his. That was to be expected. Eventually I found a voice of my own, but I never forgot the central lesson Thomas's poems had taught me: the ear and the subconscious can light the way to imagery that the conscious mind cannot conceive on its own. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Looking at Thomas's work again this weekend, I'm as certain as ever that any anthology of English poetry a century from now will include some poems of his. I'd expect to see "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower," "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "Fern Hill." But, if they only make room for a single poem, I hope it will be this one.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">It </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">may not have the delicately orchestrated music of "Poem on his birthday" or the heart-shaking pathos of "A Refusal to Mourn," but its quiet beauty may move those future readers so strongly that it will lead them on to all the rest. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>In my craft or sullen art</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Exercised in the still night</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>When only the moon rages</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>And the lovers lie abed</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>With all their griefs in their arms,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>I labour by singing light</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Not for ambition or bread</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Or the strut and trade of charms</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>On the ivory stages</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>But for the common wages</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Of their most secret heart.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Not for the proud man apart</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>From the raging moon I write</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>On these spindrift pages</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Nor for the towering dead</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>With their nightingales and psalms</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>But for the lovers, their arms</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Round the griefs of the ages,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Who pay no praise or wages</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Nor heed my craft or art.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_KR4m2nl7cMZk85X0ZGT0ZwbTQ/view?usp=sharing">AUDIO: Thomas reads "In My Craft or Sullen Art"</a></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjzYw5K3cXdzjRwHIY9Rbc-1VCDoMCqJQyRbHvH_wJ9y4Xdy8TkeOzQEndvAS8tUlmHZF4GSWYUhMcY-S_436JJVaUr9GvIBXrFcLEUGa2Sl_qIIATZtCke-cu1xM17spGIfKlsXLVoWy1/s1600/writingshed-ext.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="395" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjzYw5K3cXdzjRwHIY9Rbc-1VCDoMCqJQyRbHvH_wJ9y4Xdy8TkeOzQEndvAS8tUlmHZF4GSWYUhMcY-S_436JJVaUr9GvIBXrFcLEUGa2Sl_qIIATZtCke-cu1xM17spGIfKlsXLVoWy1/w681-h395/writingshed-ext.jpg" width="681" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The shed in Laugharne where Thomas wrote some of his best-known poems</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://voxpopulisphere.com/2018/08/04/audio-fern-hill-read-by-dylan-thomas/">AUDIO: Thomas reads "Fern Hill"</a></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.orionbooks.co.uk/books/detail.page?isbn=9780297865704">A new edition of the Collected Poems</a></span></li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-fifth-notebook-of-dylan-thomas-9781350103849/">Newly discovered Thomas notebooks published by Bloomsbury</a></span></li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d6be442e-5913-11e4-a722-00144feab7de"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">A contemporary Welsh poet on Thomas's poetry</span></a></li></ul><ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="color: red; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/W/bo7897432.html" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">Where Have the Old Words Got Me?: Ralph Maud's guide to the poetry</a></span></li>
</ul>
<h4>
<ul>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="color: red; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.dylanthomasbirthplace.com/" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Thomas's birthplace in Swansea</a></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="color: red; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.dylanthomasboathouse.com/" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-weight: normal;">Thomas's home in Laugharne</a></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-36266596?SThisFB">Memories of Thomas from his family doctor</a></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.discoverdylanthomas.com/" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">A compendium of resources from The Dylan Thomas Society</span></a></li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
<ul>
</ul>
</h4>
</div>Frank Beckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15289440558518599583noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126281543974744253.post-44720719793608518162014-06-21T14:44:00.000-04:002019-06-21T19:45:38.804-04:00Summer Solstice: lines from 'Faust'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyfmdMwTopjkL-Vt3d-pUggHrBVbfkE4vwDefnBDlKeajOJAX04lVNfqLODUsAhit_axPUgFnDDaOYXxFf0xrj8yN17-V2mUMMn287i7QlGDyTFsNBSW8nGAFwEN6lYK2Yr0WRrawhJw8h/s1600/sun-kiss_2177527k.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="393" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyfmdMwTopjkL-Vt3d-pUggHrBVbfkE4vwDefnBDlKeajOJAX04lVNfqLODUsAhit_axPUgFnDDaOYXxFf0xrj8yN17-V2mUMMn287i7QlGDyTFsNBSW8nGAFwEN6lYK2Yr0WRrawhJw8h/s1600/sun-kiss_2177527k.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I wondered what Goethe had to say that might be appropriate for the Summer Solstice and found these lines, addressed to the sun, from the Song of the Archangels in 'Faust, Part 1':</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Ihr Anblick gibt den Engeln Stärke,</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Wenn keiner sie ergrunden mag;</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Die unbegreiflich hohen Werke</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Sind herrlich wie am ersten Tag.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I'd translate that as:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Your shining gives the angels power,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Yet none can understand your ways;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Incomprehensible Creation</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Stuns as it did on the first day.</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMAKWxelm6c">Karen Leeder and David Constantine on translating 'Faust'</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://favoritequotes.diehoren.com/2016/07/on-taking-people-as-they-should-be_10.html">Goethe on taking people as they should be</a></span></li>
<li><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/01/design-for-living-books-adam-kirsch"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Adam Kirsch on Goethe in The New Yorker</span></a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.goethehaus-frankfurt.de/"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Goethe's birthplace in Frankfurt</span></a></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.klassik-stiftung.de/goethe-nationalmuseum/">The Goethe National Museum in Weimar</a></span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzJGAUOTNKb_eYLwp971qlxTP2YrpZA-LkzFSLn-1sYli03oKm01_XJJxAreDZEI82HDHeeGe9voABvS7Kz8xxbEYkVneCOkI0mVGXDOv3gRUsQOJEGhYOxVJS7FsxdrJI3NlS-JMl0HTu/s1600/Goethe+birthplace%252B+-+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="804" height="433" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzJGAUOTNKb_eYLwp971qlxTP2YrpZA-LkzFSLn-1sYli03oKm01_XJJxAreDZEI82HDHeeGe9voABvS7Kz8xxbEYkVneCOkI0mVGXDOv3gRUsQOJEGhYOxVJS7FsxdrJI3NlS-JMl0HTu/s640/Goethe+birthplace%252B+-+1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The house in Frankfurt where Goethe was born in 1749</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br /></div>
Frank Beckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15289440558518599583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126281543974744253.post-18080294989691823822014-04-14T12:26:00.002-04:002016-07-16T10:36:37.069-04:00Where poetry is thriving online<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6VI1iuiKokG-LPxeillLV115-ldG6lGaRDQZX7tJtVu-SIc5wpk-molcC_x7Brl6QsLte3KJW0jEveGHiLsYqkkjhEeSmi_-QCNMgb12pP485upUlqt4kyKlpR-E7zAyFCmzR0XMttty5/s1600/larson_katherine2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6VI1iuiKokG-LPxeillLV115-ldG6lGaRDQZX7tJtVu-SIc5wpk-molcC_x7Brl6QsLte3KJW0jEveGHiLsYqkkjhEeSmi_-QCNMgb12pP485upUlqt4kyKlpR-E7zAyFCmzR0XMttty5/s1600/larson_katherine2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Katherine Larson, the 2010 Yale Younger Poets choice</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Where do you go for poetry on the web? There are hundreds of poetry websites, but some have more to offer poets and their readers. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I've compiled a list of over 100 sites where the art of poetry is thriving, sometimes in surprising places. It's posted as a pdf file at the following link, to make it easier to save on your computer or mobile device. I hope you find it useful.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_KR4m2nl7cMNGVGSDh1MUhYb0U/view?usp=sharing">List of poetry journals and other poetry websites - updated 4/26/14</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br />While putting this list together, I made quite a few discoveries myself. Here are a few highlights:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.poets.org/">Academy of American Poets: Poems and bios of English-language poets</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/poetry">The Guardian's Poetry Page: A daily newspaper's take on poetry</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.lyrikline.org/">Lyrikline: Poets in no less than 70 languages</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.poesia.it/">Poesia: Who knew Italy had a monthly glossy magazine about poetry?</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/">Prairie Schooner: A lively wrap-up of poetry news each week</a></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>Frank Beckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15289440558518599583noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126281543974744253.post-50983253991972055312014-03-24T14:49:00.000-04:002015-05-04T12:59:13.959-04:00The White Goddess: An Encounter<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV8WNrN1AuBgNADSj0_HrjH0YcqY79CGCRf3lOtuzzsEhzRpwFVjXYFLjPeMtgQkD5n4Zl897FEDdRc6Ogj8vyM_xZKPsqN7Bd3sGDdjV7Ibrd_bdSr8q5maL5EP3-KfmYrHPLTNeA6zfu/s1600/GRA-101-012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV8WNrN1AuBgNADSj0_HrjH0YcqY79CGCRf3lOtuzzsEhzRpwFVjXYFLjPeMtgQkD5n4Zl897FEDdRc6Ogj8vyM_xZKPsqN7Bd3sGDdjV7Ibrd_bdSr8q5maL5EP3-KfmYrHPLTNeA6zfu/s1600/GRA-101-012.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Robert Graves</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">How many literary memoirs are compulsive page-turners?</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">Not many, I can tell you, having read more than my share of them. But,
in less than a week, I devoured Simon Gough's hefty recollection of
his encounter with Margot Callas, Robert Graves' 'muse' of the early
1960s. (Callas later married the director Mike Nichols.</span><span style="font-size: large;">) The book runs to more than 600 pages, but they fly by.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">At the start, I wasn't sure where the story (<i>The White Goddess: An Encounter</i>,
Galley Beggar Press) was going, and I urge you not to give up
after the first 50 pages. Gough wants to give you all the background you
need to understand his experiences on Mallorca as an 18-year-old, so he
has to dig deep. He begins by recounting his idyllic boyhood experiences in and around the house that
belonged to Graves and his wife Beryl. Gough is their great-nephew.
(That's Graves, in later life, in the photo above.)</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">As
one of Gough's reviews has observed, he uses Thomas Mann's technique of
drastically slowing down the action to draw the reader in. When that
happens - and when you understand that Gough had so blocked his memories
that he himself didn't know where the story was going when he began to
write - you're hooked. You quickly see that there's disaster ahead,
because Gough falls head-over-heels in love with Margot, whom he's
supposed to be keeping an eye on in Madrid, on behalf of his
great-uncle.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">But
there are many things that the young Gough - and the reader - don't
know, and they set off a fearful set of events. Whether she is
accurately remembered or largely invented, Margot may be one of the most
charismatic characters you'll meet between the pages of a book. Yet the
real star of the story is Beryl Graves. If Margot is the White Goddess,
Beryl is a female Merlin who sees deep into the turmoil-driven hearts
all around her.</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">In
the coda to the book's harrowing climax, Beryl tells Simon that Robert
had predicted it all in his book, 'The White Goddess.' Graves believed
that the female deity who rules the heavens once governed earth as well.
Now only true poets worship her, and to guide them, she sometimes takes
on the form of a mortal woman. But that unstable relationship always
results in betrayal and loss. Graves mapped out the process almost two
decades earlier in 'To Juan at Winter Solstice':</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Water to water, ark again to ark,</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">From woman back to woman:</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">So each new victim treads unfailingly</span></span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The never altered circuit of his fate,</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Bringing twelve peers as witness</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Both to his starry rise and starry fall ...</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br />Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Do not forget what flowers</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The great boar trampled down in ivy time.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Her sea-grey eyes were wild</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">But nothing promise that is not performed.</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Gough
promises a second volume, supposedly telling how he and his great-uncle
were eventually reconciled. For Graves eventually forgave both Margot
and Simon. That may be the impetus behind this later poem:</span></span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">We are less than friends.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">What woman ever</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">So ill-used her man?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">That I played false</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">Not even she pretends:</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">May God forgive her,</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">For, alas, I can.</span></span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15732" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Graves reading 'To Juan at the Winter Solstice' at Hunter College in New York in 1966</span></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/08/robert-graves-selected-poems-review"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Fran Brearton's review of the new Selected Poems, edited by Michael Longley</span></a></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1995/09/04/1995_09_04_070_TNY_CARDS_000371812">Another take on Margot Callas, from Alastair Reid in The New Yorker in 1995</a></span></li>
</ul>
<br /><ul>
</ul>
</div>
Frank Beckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15289440558518599583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126281543974744253.post-19359639967605945572013-01-24T22:11:00.004-05:002022-11-28T10:06:01.743-05:00Rilke's encounter with Ancient Greece<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvx_xabmIzk7egzVTGL_F88ITzoSaHMACdwpTOgdQ33z-QlUxkpovJbQ8M8neesH7yIdVt_QRDLe0oQO1sQLdfmdyasTkRN2ZqEhU9Af8i1OSdDcUs8bOvT6Yr3PDk3xBJB3fOA01F_zO8/s1600/miletus+torso_cropped+-+1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvx_xabmIzk7egzVTGL_F88ITzoSaHMACdwpTOgdQ33z-QlUxkpovJbQ8M8neesH7yIdVt_QRDLe0oQO1sQLdfmdyasTkRN2ZqEhU9Af8i1OSdDcUs8bOvT6Yr3PDk3xBJB3fOA01F_zO8/s640/miletus+torso_cropped+-+1.jpg" width="493" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">We did not know the incredible head</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">in which </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">his wide eyes ripened. Yet even now</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">his torso glimmers like a candelabra,</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">and there his gaze, dimmed only a little,</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">holds fast and shines. If it did not, the surge</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">of the breast could not blind you, and that smile</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">in the slight twist of the loins would not run</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">to the center, where procreation flared.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">Then this stone would be deformed and blunted</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">under the luminous plunge of the shoulders.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">It would not be glistening like lion's fur;</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">it would not break out from all its edges</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">like a star. For there is no place here</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">that does not see you. You must change your life.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">"Archaischer Torso Apollos" (An Archaic Torso of Apollo)</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">by Rainer Maria Rilke</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;">Translated by Frank Beck</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;"><i>At a time when Rilke was having trouble writing poetry, Auguste Rodin told him to stop writing about his childhood and use the world around him as his subject. Rilke did just that, writing about the panther at the Paris zoo, the carousel at the Luxembourg Gardens and Chartes Cathedral.</i></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;"><i><br /></i></span></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: normal;"><i>He also visited the Louvre and saw this fragment of a Greek statue of Apollo, which inspired one of his most celebrated poems, written in the summer of 1908. I've tried to convey the immediacy of Rilke's poem in German, which you can hear the actor Sven Görtz read at the first link.</i></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_KR4m2nl7cMNlhEcGthLWxSdEU/view?usp=sharing">AUDIO: Sven Görtz reads the poem in German</a></span></li>
<li><a href="https://www.textlog.de/17730.html"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Rilke's poem in German</span></a></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://translations.diehoren.com/2017/09/autumn-day-herbsttag.html">Other Rilke translations on my Selected Translations page</a></span></li>
<li><a href="http://books.wwnorton.com/books/You-Must-Change-Your-Life/"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Rachel Corbett's book about Rilke and Rodin</span></a></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.diehoren.com/2018/04/lou-andreas-salome-audacity-to-be-free.html">VIDEO: Julius Feldmeier plays Rilke in a recent film</a></span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<ul>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbryFGyNIcOBIXRnXKnX5s4T0D2CbGK-g2a4Q31slWws1qBu25yxGQXQB5EcEe7a4huVNvKXHnRT96H0Tu_f2bT6FxsMdT5rUQvD97sVQWeVaSPIcfOdfmzQIYviNrS6ATYqB0QTEK8idV/s1600/12310097_10205193236291421_8650260941688051153_o.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbryFGyNIcOBIXRnXKnX5s4T0D2CbGK-g2a4Q31slWws1qBu25yxGQXQB5EcEe7a4huVNvKXHnRT96H0Tu_f2bT6FxsMdT5rUQvD97sVQWeVaSPIcfOdfmzQIYviNrS6ATYqB0QTEK8idV/s640/12310097_10205193236291421_8650260941688051153_o.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Julius Feldmeier as Rilke in <i>Lou Andreas-Salomé: The Audacity to Be Free</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br /></div>
Frank Beckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15289440558518599583noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7126281543974744253.post-62785930038550964862013-01-24T00:05:00.004-05:002023-02-09T12:51:49.832-05:00What made Carlos Kleiber a great conductor?<h3>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-YlYnTQ6SiyvXSLoEOBSJxWDRevmE0udvzs7_9XOWxYE1ce5EGC56nZFk1sQC7EK1evGv-wmTfyQ5rl05BQYiV3i-SKh6BfRqUdSyQGccadQIMkg3QFLAjxEDkKGXLOiiXayrGD2QX1fT/s1600/kleiber-HA-Kultur-Hamburg.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="425" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-YlYnTQ6SiyvXSLoEOBSJxWDRevmE0udvzs7_9XOWxYE1ce5EGC56nZFk1sQC7EK1evGv-wmTfyQ5rl05BQYiV3i-SKh6BfRqUdSyQGccadQIMkg3QFLAjxEDkKGXLOiiXayrGD2QX1fT/s1600/kleiber-HA-Kultur-Hamburg.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
</h3>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">In 2009 BBC Music Magazine asked 100 leading conductors to name the conductor they found most inspiring. Their choice wasn't Karajan, Bernstein or Toscanini; it was Austrian conductor Carlos Kleiber (1930-2004). Yet watching him in action, you begin to understand why so many musicians admire him.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Kleiber never thought of performing a piece that he didn't know inside out, often using the meticulously marked scores prepared by his father, Erich Kleiber. In fact, he limited his repertory to a relative handful of works that he cared deeply about. And his rapport with the musicians was such that it often took only a smile or a raised eyebrow to get exactly what he had in mind.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">But most important was the fact that he made a deep emotional connection with every work he performed. It's hard to believe that connection could have been any stronger had Kleiber written to works himself. </span></span></span><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">Eric Schutz showed us what that sense of rapport with the music meant in the concert hall in his 2011 documentary, which is now available on DVD. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif; font-size: large;">With contributions from the conductor's sister Veronika, Brigette Fassbaender, Otto Schenk (who directed many of the opera productions Kleiber conducted) and Manfred Honeck, music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, it's a production I warmly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about this extraordinary musician.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/7WxM1jRG1ws/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7WxM1jRG1ws?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Here are some other performances, along with a recording of the only interview Kleiber did and memories of him on the podium from a Met cellist:</span></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVFap5ukOvY">VIDEO: Kleiber conducts Beethoven's 7th Symphony</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HDmIFT0pHY">VIDEO: Kleiber conducts the overture to 'Die Fledermaus'</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYZliEez2Vk">VIDEO: Kleiber conducts the final scene of 'Der Rosenkavalier'</a></span></li><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IomRh4Wir2M"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">VIDEO: Kleiber conducts 'Unter Donner und Blitz' by Johann Strauss II</span></a></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qydEss4m20">AUDIO: Kleiber's only interview - December 1960</a></span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjE9aOcqqc8">VIDEO: Jon Tolansky's six-part guide to Kleibers DG recordings</a><br /></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.jameskreger.com/article.htm">Memories of Kleiber from Met cellist James Kreger</a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/corresponding-with-carlos-charles-barber/1101958170">Charles Barber's biography of Kleiber</a></span></li>
</ul>
<br />Frank Beckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15289440558518599583noreply@blogger.com4