January 5, 2016
"I Hate New Year’s Day" by Antonio Gramsci (1916)
Every morning, when I wake again under the pall of the sky, I feel that for me it is New Year’s Day.
That’s why I hate these New Year’s that fall like fixed maturities, which turn life and human spirit into a commercial concern with its neat final balance, its outstanding amounts, its budget for the new management. They make us lose the continuity of life and spirit. You end up seriously thinking that between one year and the next there is a break, that a new history is beginning; you make resolutions, and you regret your irresolution, and so on, and so forth. This is generally what’s wrong with dates.
They say that chronology is the backbone of history. Fine. But we also need to accept that there are four or five fundamental dates that every good person keeps lodged in their brain, which have played bad tricks on history. They too are New Year’s. The New Year’s of Roman history, or of the Middle Ages, or of the modern age.
And they have become so invasive and fossilizing that we sometimes catch ourselves thinking that life in Italy began in 752, and that 1490 or 1492 are like mountains that humanity vaulted over, suddenly finding itself in a new world, coming into a new life. So the date becomes an obstacle, a parapet that stops us from seeing that history continues to unfold along the same fundamental unchanging line, without abrupt stops, like when at the cinema the film rips and there is an interval of dazzling light.
That’s why I hate New Year’s. I want every morning to be a new year’s for me. Every day I want to reckon with myself, and every day I want to renew myself. No day set aside for rest. I choose my pauses myself, when I feel drunk with the intensity of life and I want to plunge into animality to draw from it new vigor.
No spiritual time-serving. I would like every hour of my life to be new, though connected to the ones that have passed. No day of celebration with its mandatory collective rhythms, to share with all the strangers I don’t care about. Because our grandfathers’ grandfathers, and so on, celebrated, we too should feel the urge to celebrate. That is nauseating.
I await socialism for this reason too. Because it will hurl into the trash all of these dates which have no resonance in our spirit and, if it creates others, they will at least be our own, and not the ones we have to accept without reservations from our silly ancestors.
-- "I Hate New Year's Day" by Antonio Gramsci, first published in Avanti! on January 1, 1916 and translated by Alberto Toscano for Viewpoint Magazine. Accessed at Jacobin on January 4, 2016.
August 27, 2015
"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
--Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays,” Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, ed. by Frederick Glaysher, Liveright, 1985. Accessed at: Poetry Foundation.
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
--Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays,” Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, ed. by Frederick Glaysher, Liveright, 1985. Accessed at: Poetry Foundation.
May 5, 2015
A haiku by Yosa Buson
The evening breezes--
The water splashes against
A blue heron's shins.
-- Yosa Buson (1716-1783), from The Classic Tradition of Haiku: An Anthology, ed. Faubion Bowers, this haiku trans. Donald Keene, Dover Thrift Editions, 1996, p. 54.
March 31, 2015
"Audible and Inaudible" by Yannis Ritsos
Audible and Inaudible
A sudden, unexpected movement; his hand
clutched the wound to stop the bleeding,
though we had not heard the gunburst at all
or the whistling of a bullet. A short time later
he lowered his hand and smiled;
but again slowly he placed his palm
on that same spot, pulled out his wallet,
paid the waiter politely, and went out.
Just then the small coffee cup cracked by itself.
That at last we heard clearly.
-- Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990), "Audible and Inaudible," trans. from the Greek by Minas Savvas, The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, eds. Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris, Words Without Borders, 2010, p. 169.
A sudden, unexpected movement; his hand
clutched the wound to stop the bleeding,
though we had not heard the gunburst at all
or the whistling of a bullet. A short time later
he lowered his hand and smiled;
but again slowly he placed his palm
on that same spot, pulled out his wallet,
paid the waiter politely, and went out.
Just then the small coffee cup cracked by itself.
That at last we heard clearly.
-- Yannis Ritsos (1909-1990), "Audible and Inaudible," trans. from the Greek by Minas Savvas, The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, eds. Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris, Words Without Borders, 2010, p. 169.
March 9, 2015
"None of the books have time" by Philip Larkin
None of the books have time
To say how selfless feels,
They make it sound a superior way
Of getting what you want. It isn't at all.
Selflessness is like waiting in a hospital
In a badly-fitting suit on a cold wet morning.
Selfishness is like listening to good jazz
With drinks for further orders and a huge fire.
-- Philip Larkin, "None of the books have time," 1960. Recommended by a friend.
February 24, 2015
Philip Levine, "What Work Is"
What Work Is
We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.
-- Philip Levine, “What Work Is,” from What Work Is: Poems, Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Accessed at Poetry Foundation.
We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.
-- Philip Levine, “What Work Is,” from What Work Is: Poems, Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. Accessed at Poetry Foundation.
January 28, 2015
"Since Nine O’Clock" by C.P. Cavafy
Since Nine O’Clock
Half past twelve. Time has gone by quickly
since nine o’clock when I lit the lamp
and sat down here. I’ve been sitting without reading,
without speaking. Completely alone in the house,
whom could I talk to?
Since nine o’clock when I lit the lamp
the shade of my young body
has come to haunt me, to remind me
of shut scented rooms,
of past sensual pleasure—what daring pleasure.
And it’s also brought back to me
streets now unrecognizable,
bustling night clubs now closed,
theatres and cafés no longer there.
The shade of my young body
also brought back the things that make us sad:
family grief, separations,
the feelings of my own people, feelings
of the dead so little acknowledged.
Half past twelve. How the time has gone by.
Half past twelve. How the years have gone by.
-- "Since Nine O'Clock" by C.P. Cavafy, from Collected Poems, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, edited by George Savidis, revised edition, Princeton University Press, 1992. Accessed via the Cavafy Archive.
Half past twelve. Time has gone by quickly
since nine o’clock when I lit the lamp
and sat down here. I’ve been sitting without reading,
without speaking. Completely alone in the house,
whom could I talk to?
Since nine o’clock when I lit the lamp
the shade of my young body
has come to haunt me, to remind me
of shut scented rooms,
of past sensual pleasure—what daring pleasure.
And it’s also brought back to me
streets now unrecognizable,
bustling night clubs now closed,
theatres and cafés no longer there.
The shade of my young body
also brought back the things that make us sad:
family grief, separations,
the feelings of my own people, feelings
of the dead so little acknowledged.
Half past twelve. How the time has gone by.
Half past twelve. How the years have gone by.
-- "Since Nine O'Clock" by C.P. Cavafy, from Collected Poems, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, edited by George Savidis, revised edition, Princeton University Press, 1992. Accessed via the Cavafy Archive.
January 18, 2015
"The Decapitated Chicken" by Horacio Quiroga
All day long the four idiot
sons of the couple Mazzini-Ferraz sat on a bench in the patio. Their tongues
protruded from between their lips; their eyes were dull; their mouths
hung open as they turned their heads.
The patio had an earthen floor and was closed to the west by a brick wall. The bench was five feet from the wall, parallel to it, and there they sat, motionless, their gaze fastened on the bricks. As the sun went down, disappearing behind the wall, the idiots rejoiced. The blinding light was always what first gained their attention; little by little by little their eyes lighted up; finally, they would laugh uproariously, each infected by the same uneasy hilarity, staring at the sun with bestial joy, as if it were something to eat.
Other times, lined up on the bench, they hummed for hours on end, imitating the sound of the trolley. Loud noises, too, shook them from their inertia, and at those times they ran around the patio, biting their tongues and mewing. But almost always they were sunk in the somber lethargy of idiocy, passing the entire day seated on their bench, their legs hanging motionless, dampening their pants with slobber.
The oldest was twelve and the youngest eight. Their dirty and slovenly appearance was testimony to the total lack of maternal care.
These four idiots, nevertheless, had once been the joy of their parents' lives. When they had been married three months, Mazzini and Berta had oriented the self-centered love of man and wife, wife and husband, toward a more vital future: a son. What greater happiness for two people in love than that blessed consecration of an affection liberated from the vile egotism of purposeless love and -what is worse for love itself- love without any possible hope of renewal?
So thought Mazzini and Berta, and, when after fourteen months of matrimony their son arrived, they felt happiness complete. The child prospered, beautiful, radiant, for a year and a half. But one night in his twentieth month he was racked by terrible convulsions, and the following morning he no longer recognized his parents. The doctor examined him with the kind of professional attention that obviously seeks to find the cause of the illness in the infirmities of the parents.
After a few days the child's paralyzed limbs recovered their movement, but the soul, the intelligence, even instinct, were gone forever. He lay on his mother's lap, an idiot, driveling, limp, to all purposes dead.
"Son, my dearest son!" the mother sobbed over the frightful ruin of her first-born.
The father, desolate, accompanied the doctor outside.
"I can say it to you; I think it is a hopeless case. He might improve, be educated to the degree his idiocy permits, but nothing more."
"Yes! Yes...!" Mazzini assented. "But tell me: do you think it is heredity, that...?"
"As far as the paternal heredity is concerned, I told you what I thought when I saw your son. As for the mother's, there's a lung there that doesn't sound too good. I don't see anything else, but her breathing is slightly ragged. Have her thoroughly examined."
With his soul tormented by remorse, Mazzini redoubled his love for his son, the idiot child who was paying for the excesses of his grandfather. At the same time he had to console, to ceaselessly sustain Berta, who was wounded to the depths of her being by the failure of her young motherhood.
As is only natural, the couple put all their love into the hopes for another son. A son was born, and his health and the clarity of his laughter rekindled their extinguished hopes. But at eighteen months the convulsions of the first-born were repeated, and on the following morning the second son awoke an idiot.
This time the parents fell into complete despair. So it was their blood, their love, that was cursed. Especially their love. He, twenty-eight; she, twenty-two; and all their passionate tenderness had not succeeded in creating one atom of normal life. They no longer asked for beauty and intelligence as for the first born -only a son, a son like any other!
From the second disaster burst forth new flames of aching love, a mad desire to redeem once and for all the sanctity of their tenderness. Twins were born; and step by step the history of the two older brothers was repeated.
Even so, beyond the immense bitterness, Mazzini and Berta maintained great compassion for their four sons. They must wrest from the limbo of deepest animality, not their souls, lost now, but instinct itself. The boys could not swallow, move about or even sit up. They learned, finally, to walk, but they bumped into things because they took no notice of obstacles. When they were washed, they mewed and gurgled until their faces were flushed. They were animated only by food or when they saw brilliant colors or heard thunder. Then they laughed, radiant with bestial frenzy, pushing out their tongues and spewing rivers of slaver. On the other hand, they possessed a certain imitative faculty, but nothing more.
The terrifying line of descent seemed to have been ended with the twins. But with the passage of three years Mazzini and Berta once again ardently desired another child, trusting that the long interim would have appeased their destiny.
Their hopes were not satisfied. And because of this burning desire and exasperation from its lack of fulfillment, the husband and wife grew bitter. Until this time each had taken his own share of responsibility for the misery their children had caused, but hopelessness for the redemption of the four animals born to them finally created that imperious necessity to blame others that is the specific patrimony of inferior hearts.
It began with a change of pronouns: your sons. And since they intended to trap, as well as insult each other, the atmosphere became charged.
"It seems to me," Mazzini, who had just come in and was washing his hands, said to Berta, "that you could keep the boys cleaner."
As if she hadn't heard him, Berta continued reading.
"It's the first time," she replied after a pause, "I've seen you concerned about the condition of your sons."
Mazzini turned his head toward her with a forced smile.
"Our sons, I think."
"All right, our sons. Is that the way you like it?" She raised her eyes.
This time Mazzini expressed himself clearly.
"Surely you're not going to say I'm to blame, are you?"
"Oh, no!" Berta smiled to herself, very pale. "But neither am I, I imagine! That's all I needed...," she murmured.
"What? What's all you needed?"
"Well, if anyone's to blame, it isn't me, just remember that! That's what I meant."
Her husband looked at her for a moment with a brutal desire to wound her.
"Let's drop it!" he said finally, drying his hands.
"As you wish, but if you mean..."
"Berta!"
"As you wish!"
This was the first clash, and other followed. But, in the inevitable reconciliations, their souls were united in redoubled rapture and eagerness for another child.
So a daughter was born. Mazzini and Berta lived for two years with anguish as their constant companion, always expecting another disaster. It did not occur, however, and the parents focused all their contentment on their daughter, who took advantage of their indulgence to become spoiled and very badly behaved.
Although even in the later years Berta had continued to care for the four boys, after Bertita's birth she virtually ignored the other children. The very thought of them horrified her, like the memory of something atrocious she had been forced to perform. The same thing happened to Mazzini, though to a lesser degree.
Nevertheless, their souls had not found peace. Their daughter's least indisposition now unleashed -because of the terror of losing her- the bitterness created by their unsound progeny. Bile had accumulated for so long that the distended viscera spilled venom at the slightest touch. From the moment of the first poisonous quarrel Mazzini and Berta had lost respect for one another, and if there is anything to which man feels himself drawn with cruel fulfillment it is, once begun, the complete humiliation of another person. Formerly they had been restrained by their mutual failure; now that success had come, each, attributing it to himself, felt more strongly the infamy of the four misbegotten sons the other had forced him to create.
With such emotions there was no longer any possibility of affection for the four boys. The servant dressed them, fed them, put them to bed, with gross brutality. She almost never bathed them. They spent most of the day facing the wall deprived of anything resembling a caress.
So Bertita celebrated her fourth birthday, and that night, as a result of the sweets her parents were incapable of denying her, the child had a slight chill and fever. And the fear of seeing her die or become an idiot opened once again the ever-present wound.
For three hours they did not speak to each other, and, as usual, Mazzini's swift pacing served as a motive.
"My God! Can't you walk more slowly? How many times...?"
"All right, I just forget. I'll stop. I don't do it on purpose."
She smiled, disdainful.
"No, no, of course I don't think that of you!"
"And I would never had believed that of you...you consumptive!"
"What! What did you say?"
"Nothing!"
"Oh, yes, I heard you say something! Look, I don't know what you said, but I swear I'd prefer anything to having a father like yours!"
Mazzini turned pale.
"At last!" he muttered between clenched teeth. "At last, viper, you've said what you've been wanting to!"
"Yes, a viper, yes! But I had healthy parents, you hear? Healthy! My father didn't die in delirium! I could have had sons like anybody else's! Those are your sons, those four!"
Mazzini exploded in his turn.
"Consumptive viper! That's what I called you, what I want to tell you! Ask him, ask the doctor who's to blame for your sons' meningitis: my father or your rotten lung? Yes, viper!"
They continued with increasing violence, until a moan from Bertita instantly sealed their lips. By one o'clock in the morning the child's light indigestion had disappeared, and, as it inevitably happens with all young married couples who have loved intensely, even for a while, they effected a reconciliation, all the more effusive for the infamy of the offenses.
A splendid day dawned, and as Berta arose she spit up blood. Her emotion and the terrible night were, without any doubt, primarily responsible. Mazzini held her in his embrace for a long while, and she cried hopelessly, but neither of them dared to say a word.
At ten, they decided that after lunch they would go out. They were pressed for time so they ordered the servant to kill a hen.
The brilliant day had drawn the idiots from their bench. So while the servant was cutting off the head of the chicken in the kitchen, bleeding it parsimoniously (Berta had learned from her mother this effective method of conserving the freshness of the meat), she thought she sensed something like breathing behind her. She turned and saw the four idiots, standing shoulder to shoulder, watching the operation with stupefaction. Red...Red...
"Senora! The boys are here in the kitchen."
Berta came in immediately; she never wanted them to set foot in the kitchen. Not even during these hours of full pardon, forgetfulness, and regained happiness could she avoid this horrible slight! Because, naturally, the more intense her raptures of love for her husband and daughter, the greater her loathing for the monsters.
"Get them out of here, Maria!" Throw them out! Throw them out, I tell you!"
The four poor little beasts, shaken and brutally shoved, went back to their bench.
After lunch, everyone went out; the servant to Buenos Aires and the couple and child for a walk among the country houses. They returned as the sun was sinking, but Berta wanted to talk for a while with her neighbors across the way. Her daughter quickly ran into the house.
In the meantime, the idiots had not moved from their bench the whole day. The sun had crossed the wall now, beginning to sink behind it, while they continued to stare at the bricks, more sluggish than ever.
Suddenly, something came between their line of vision and the wall. Their sister, tired of five hours with her parents, wanted to look around a bit on her own. She paused at the base of the wall and looked thoughtfully at its summit. She wanted to climb it; this could not be doubted. Finally she decided on a chair with the seat missing, but still she couldn't reach the top. Then she picked up a kerosene tin, and, with a fine sense of relative space, placed it upright on the chair -with which she triumphed.
The four idiots, their gaze indifferent, watched how their sister succeeded patiently in gaining her equilibrium and how, on tiptoe, she rested her neck against the top of the wall between her straining hands. They watched her search everywhere for a toehold to climb up higher.
The idiots' gaze became animated; the same insistent light fixed in all their pupils. Their eyes were fixed on their sister, as the growing sensation of bestial gluttony changed every line of their faces. Slowly they advanced toward the wall. The little girl, having succeeded in finding a toehold and about to straddle the wall and surely fall off the other side, felt herself seized by one leg. Below her, the eight eyes staring into hers frightened her.
"Let loose! Let me go!" she cried, shaking her leg, but she was captive.
"Mama! Oh, Mama! Mama, Papa!" she cried imperiously. She tried still to cling to the top of the wall but she felt herself pulled, and she fell.
"Mama, oh, Ma-----" She could cry no more. One of the boys squeezed her neck, parting her curls as if they were feathers, and the other three dragged her by one leg toward the kitchen where that morning the chicken had been bled, holding her tightly, drawing the life out of her second by second.
Mazzini, in the house across the way, thought he heard his daughter's voice.
"I think she's calling you," he said to Berta.
They listened, uneasy, but heard nothing more. Even so, a moment later they said good-by, and, while Berta went to put up her hat, Mazzini went into the patio.
"Bertita!"
No one answered.
"Bertita! He raised his already altered voice.
The silence was so funeral to his eternally terrified heart that a chill of horrible presentiment ran to his spine.
"My daughter, my daughter!" He ran frantically toward the back of the house. But as he passed by the kitchen he saw a sea of blood on the floor. he violently pushed open the half-closed door and uttered a cry of horror. Berta, who had already started running when she heard Mazzini's anguished call, cried out too. But as she rushed toward the kitchen, Mazzini, livid as death, stood in her way, holding her back.
"Don't go in. Don't go in!"
But Berta had seen the blood-covered floor. She could only utter a hoarse cry, throw her arms above her head, and, leaning against her husband, sink slowly to the floor.
-- Horacio Quiroga (1878-1937), "The Decapitated Chicken" (or "The Beheaded Chicken"), collected in The Beheaded Chicken and Other Stories (La gallina degollada y otros cuentos), 1925, version translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, accessed at: UT Dallas.
The patio had an earthen floor and was closed to the west by a brick wall. The bench was five feet from the wall, parallel to it, and there they sat, motionless, their gaze fastened on the bricks. As the sun went down, disappearing behind the wall, the idiots rejoiced. The blinding light was always what first gained their attention; little by little by little their eyes lighted up; finally, they would laugh uproariously, each infected by the same uneasy hilarity, staring at the sun with bestial joy, as if it were something to eat.
Other times, lined up on the bench, they hummed for hours on end, imitating the sound of the trolley. Loud noises, too, shook them from their inertia, and at those times they ran around the patio, biting their tongues and mewing. But almost always they were sunk in the somber lethargy of idiocy, passing the entire day seated on their bench, their legs hanging motionless, dampening their pants with slobber.
The oldest was twelve and the youngest eight. Their dirty and slovenly appearance was testimony to the total lack of maternal care.
These four idiots, nevertheless, had once been the joy of their parents' lives. When they had been married three months, Mazzini and Berta had oriented the self-centered love of man and wife, wife and husband, toward a more vital future: a son. What greater happiness for two people in love than that blessed consecration of an affection liberated from the vile egotism of purposeless love and -what is worse for love itself- love without any possible hope of renewal?
So thought Mazzini and Berta, and, when after fourteen months of matrimony their son arrived, they felt happiness complete. The child prospered, beautiful, radiant, for a year and a half. But one night in his twentieth month he was racked by terrible convulsions, and the following morning he no longer recognized his parents. The doctor examined him with the kind of professional attention that obviously seeks to find the cause of the illness in the infirmities of the parents.
After a few days the child's paralyzed limbs recovered their movement, but the soul, the intelligence, even instinct, were gone forever. He lay on his mother's lap, an idiot, driveling, limp, to all purposes dead.
"Son, my dearest son!" the mother sobbed over the frightful ruin of her first-born.
The father, desolate, accompanied the doctor outside.
"I can say it to you; I think it is a hopeless case. He might improve, be educated to the degree his idiocy permits, but nothing more."
"Yes! Yes...!" Mazzini assented. "But tell me: do you think it is heredity, that...?"
"As far as the paternal heredity is concerned, I told you what I thought when I saw your son. As for the mother's, there's a lung there that doesn't sound too good. I don't see anything else, but her breathing is slightly ragged. Have her thoroughly examined."
With his soul tormented by remorse, Mazzini redoubled his love for his son, the idiot child who was paying for the excesses of his grandfather. At the same time he had to console, to ceaselessly sustain Berta, who was wounded to the depths of her being by the failure of her young motherhood.
As is only natural, the couple put all their love into the hopes for another son. A son was born, and his health and the clarity of his laughter rekindled their extinguished hopes. But at eighteen months the convulsions of the first-born were repeated, and on the following morning the second son awoke an idiot.
This time the parents fell into complete despair. So it was their blood, their love, that was cursed. Especially their love. He, twenty-eight; she, twenty-two; and all their passionate tenderness had not succeeded in creating one atom of normal life. They no longer asked for beauty and intelligence as for the first born -only a son, a son like any other!
From the second disaster burst forth new flames of aching love, a mad desire to redeem once and for all the sanctity of their tenderness. Twins were born; and step by step the history of the two older brothers was repeated.
Even so, beyond the immense bitterness, Mazzini and Berta maintained great compassion for their four sons. They must wrest from the limbo of deepest animality, not their souls, lost now, but instinct itself. The boys could not swallow, move about or even sit up. They learned, finally, to walk, but they bumped into things because they took no notice of obstacles. When they were washed, they mewed and gurgled until their faces were flushed. They were animated only by food or when they saw brilliant colors or heard thunder. Then they laughed, radiant with bestial frenzy, pushing out their tongues and spewing rivers of slaver. On the other hand, they possessed a certain imitative faculty, but nothing more.
The terrifying line of descent seemed to have been ended with the twins. But with the passage of three years Mazzini and Berta once again ardently desired another child, trusting that the long interim would have appeased their destiny.
Their hopes were not satisfied. And because of this burning desire and exasperation from its lack of fulfillment, the husband and wife grew bitter. Until this time each had taken his own share of responsibility for the misery their children had caused, but hopelessness for the redemption of the four animals born to them finally created that imperious necessity to blame others that is the specific patrimony of inferior hearts.
It began with a change of pronouns: your sons. And since they intended to trap, as well as insult each other, the atmosphere became charged.
"It seems to me," Mazzini, who had just come in and was washing his hands, said to Berta, "that you could keep the boys cleaner."
As if she hadn't heard him, Berta continued reading.
"It's the first time," she replied after a pause, "I've seen you concerned about the condition of your sons."
Mazzini turned his head toward her with a forced smile.
"Our sons, I think."
"All right, our sons. Is that the way you like it?" She raised her eyes.
This time Mazzini expressed himself clearly.
"Surely you're not going to say I'm to blame, are you?"
"Oh, no!" Berta smiled to herself, very pale. "But neither am I, I imagine! That's all I needed...," she murmured.
"What? What's all you needed?"
"Well, if anyone's to blame, it isn't me, just remember that! That's what I meant."
Her husband looked at her for a moment with a brutal desire to wound her.
"Let's drop it!" he said finally, drying his hands.
"As you wish, but if you mean..."
"Berta!"
"As you wish!"
This was the first clash, and other followed. But, in the inevitable reconciliations, their souls were united in redoubled rapture and eagerness for another child.
So a daughter was born. Mazzini and Berta lived for two years with anguish as their constant companion, always expecting another disaster. It did not occur, however, and the parents focused all their contentment on their daughter, who took advantage of their indulgence to become spoiled and very badly behaved.
Although even in the later years Berta had continued to care for the four boys, after Bertita's birth she virtually ignored the other children. The very thought of them horrified her, like the memory of something atrocious she had been forced to perform. The same thing happened to Mazzini, though to a lesser degree.
Nevertheless, their souls had not found peace. Their daughter's least indisposition now unleashed -because of the terror of losing her- the bitterness created by their unsound progeny. Bile had accumulated for so long that the distended viscera spilled venom at the slightest touch. From the moment of the first poisonous quarrel Mazzini and Berta had lost respect for one another, and if there is anything to which man feels himself drawn with cruel fulfillment it is, once begun, the complete humiliation of another person. Formerly they had been restrained by their mutual failure; now that success had come, each, attributing it to himself, felt more strongly the infamy of the four misbegotten sons the other had forced him to create.
With such emotions there was no longer any possibility of affection for the four boys. The servant dressed them, fed them, put them to bed, with gross brutality. She almost never bathed them. They spent most of the day facing the wall deprived of anything resembling a caress.
So Bertita celebrated her fourth birthday, and that night, as a result of the sweets her parents were incapable of denying her, the child had a slight chill and fever. And the fear of seeing her die or become an idiot opened once again the ever-present wound.
For three hours they did not speak to each other, and, as usual, Mazzini's swift pacing served as a motive.
"My God! Can't you walk more slowly? How many times...?"
"All right, I just forget. I'll stop. I don't do it on purpose."
She smiled, disdainful.
"No, no, of course I don't think that of you!"
"And I would never had believed that of you...you consumptive!"
"What! What did you say?"
"Nothing!"
"Oh, yes, I heard you say something! Look, I don't know what you said, but I swear I'd prefer anything to having a father like yours!"
Mazzini turned pale.
"At last!" he muttered between clenched teeth. "At last, viper, you've said what you've been wanting to!"
"Yes, a viper, yes! But I had healthy parents, you hear? Healthy! My father didn't die in delirium! I could have had sons like anybody else's! Those are your sons, those four!"
Mazzini exploded in his turn.
"Consumptive viper! That's what I called you, what I want to tell you! Ask him, ask the doctor who's to blame for your sons' meningitis: my father or your rotten lung? Yes, viper!"
They continued with increasing violence, until a moan from Bertita instantly sealed their lips. By one o'clock in the morning the child's light indigestion had disappeared, and, as it inevitably happens with all young married couples who have loved intensely, even for a while, they effected a reconciliation, all the more effusive for the infamy of the offenses.
A splendid day dawned, and as Berta arose she spit up blood. Her emotion and the terrible night were, without any doubt, primarily responsible. Mazzini held her in his embrace for a long while, and she cried hopelessly, but neither of them dared to say a word.
At ten, they decided that after lunch they would go out. They were pressed for time so they ordered the servant to kill a hen.
The brilliant day had drawn the idiots from their bench. So while the servant was cutting off the head of the chicken in the kitchen, bleeding it parsimoniously (Berta had learned from her mother this effective method of conserving the freshness of the meat), she thought she sensed something like breathing behind her. She turned and saw the four idiots, standing shoulder to shoulder, watching the operation with stupefaction. Red...Red...
"Senora! The boys are here in the kitchen."
Berta came in immediately; she never wanted them to set foot in the kitchen. Not even during these hours of full pardon, forgetfulness, and regained happiness could she avoid this horrible slight! Because, naturally, the more intense her raptures of love for her husband and daughter, the greater her loathing for the monsters.
"Get them out of here, Maria!" Throw them out! Throw them out, I tell you!"
The four poor little beasts, shaken and brutally shoved, went back to their bench.
After lunch, everyone went out; the servant to Buenos Aires and the couple and child for a walk among the country houses. They returned as the sun was sinking, but Berta wanted to talk for a while with her neighbors across the way. Her daughter quickly ran into the house.
In the meantime, the idiots had not moved from their bench the whole day. The sun had crossed the wall now, beginning to sink behind it, while they continued to stare at the bricks, more sluggish than ever.
Suddenly, something came between their line of vision and the wall. Their sister, tired of five hours with her parents, wanted to look around a bit on her own. She paused at the base of the wall and looked thoughtfully at its summit. She wanted to climb it; this could not be doubted. Finally she decided on a chair with the seat missing, but still she couldn't reach the top. Then she picked up a kerosene tin, and, with a fine sense of relative space, placed it upright on the chair -with which she triumphed.
The four idiots, their gaze indifferent, watched how their sister succeeded patiently in gaining her equilibrium and how, on tiptoe, she rested her neck against the top of the wall between her straining hands. They watched her search everywhere for a toehold to climb up higher.
The idiots' gaze became animated; the same insistent light fixed in all their pupils. Their eyes were fixed on their sister, as the growing sensation of bestial gluttony changed every line of their faces. Slowly they advanced toward the wall. The little girl, having succeeded in finding a toehold and about to straddle the wall and surely fall off the other side, felt herself seized by one leg. Below her, the eight eyes staring into hers frightened her.
"Let loose! Let me go!" she cried, shaking her leg, but she was captive.
"Mama! Oh, Mama! Mama, Papa!" she cried imperiously. She tried still to cling to the top of the wall but she felt herself pulled, and she fell.
"Mama, oh, Ma-----" She could cry no more. One of the boys squeezed her neck, parting her curls as if they were feathers, and the other three dragged her by one leg toward the kitchen where that morning the chicken had been bled, holding her tightly, drawing the life out of her second by second.
Mazzini, in the house across the way, thought he heard his daughter's voice.
"I think she's calling you," he said to Berta.
They listened, uneasy, but heard nothing more. Even so, a moment later they said good-by, and, while Berta went to put up her hat, Mazzini went into the patio.
"Bertita!"
No one answered.
"Bertita! He raised his already altered voice.
The silence was so funeral to his eternally terrified heart that a chill of horrible presentiment ran to his spine.
"My daughter, my daughter!" He ran frantically toward the back of the house. But as he passed by the kitchen he saw a sea of blood on the floor. he violently pushed open the half-closed door and uttered a cry of horror. Berta, who had already started running when she heard Mazzini's anguished call, cried out too. But as she rushed toward the kitchen, Mazzini, livid as death, stood in her way, holding her back.
"Don't go in. Don't go in!"
But Berta had seen the blood-covered floor. She could only utter a hoarse cry, throw her arms above her head, and, leaning against her husband, sink slowly to the floor.
-- Horacio Quiroga (1878-1937), "The Decapitated Chicken" (or "The Beheaded Chicken"), collected in The Beheaded Chicken and Other Stories (La gallina degollada y otros cuentos), 1925, version translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, accessed at: UT Dallas.
December 4, 2014
Three poems by Mark Strand (1934–2014)
The End
Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.
When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky
Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.
The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter
It had been a long day at the office and a long ride back to the small apartment where I
lived. When I got there I flicked on the light and saw on the table an envelope with my
name on it. Where was the clock? Where was the calendar? The handwriting was my
father’s, but he had been dead for forty years. As one might, I began to think that
maybe, just maybe, he was alive, living a secret life somewhere nearby. How else to explain the envelope? To steady myself, I sat down, opened it, and pulled out the letter.
“Dear Son,” was the way it began. “Dear Son” and then nothing.
Keeping Things Whole
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
Mark Strand, "The End," from The Continuous Life, Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
Mark Strand, "The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter," Poetry, January 2011.
Mark Strand, "Keeping Things Whole," from Selected Poems, Alfred A. Knopf, 1979, 1980, 2002.
All poems accessed at The Poetry Foundation.
Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.
When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky
Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.
The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter
It had been a long day at the office and a long ride back to the small apartment where I
lived. When I got there I flicked on the light and saw on the table an envelope with my
name on it. Where was the clock? Where was the calendar? The handwriting was my
father’s, but he had been dead for forty years. As one might, I began to think that
maybe, just maybe, he was alive, living a secret life somewhere nearby. How else to explain the envelope? To steady myself, I sat down, opened it, and pulled out the letter.
“Dear Son,” was the way it began. “Dear Son” and then nothing.
Keeping Things Whole
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.
Mark Strand, "The End," from The Continuous Life, Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
Mark Strand, "The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter," Poetry, January 2011.
Mark Strand, "Keeping Things Whole," from Selected Poems, Alfred A. Knopf, 1979, 1980, 2002.
All poems accessed at The Poetry Foundation.
October 4, 2014
Excerpt, Água Viva by Clarice Lispector (trans. Stefan Tobler)
But I don't know how to capture what's happening now except by living everything that happens to me here and now and whatever it may be. I let the free horse run fiery in its pure noble joy. I, who run nervously and only reality delimits me. And when the day reaches its end I hear the crickets and become entirely full and unintelligible. Then come the early hours bulging full of thousands of blaring little birds. And each thing that happens to me I live it here by noting it down. Because I want to feel in my probing hands the living and quivering nerve of the today.
Beyond thought I reach a state. I refuse to divide it up into words--and what I cannot and do not want to express ends up being the most secret of my secrets. I know that I'm scared of the moments in which I don't use thought and that's a momentary state that is difficult to reach, and which, entirely secret, no longer uses the words with which thoughts are produced. Is not using words to lose your identity? is it getting lost in the harmful essential shadows?
I lose the identity of the world inside myself and exist without guarantees. I achieve whatever is achievable but I live the unachievable and the meaning of me and the world and you isn't obvious. It's fantastic, and I handle myself in these moments with immense delicacy. Is God a form of being? the abstraction that materializes in the nature of all that exists? My roots are in the divine shadows. Drowsy roots. Wavering in the dark shadows.
-- Clarice Lispector, Água Viva, trans. Stefan Tobler, New Directions Press, copyrights 1973 (the Heirs of Clarice Lispector) and 2012 (Stefan Tobler, translation, and Benjamin Moser, introduction), p. 64.
Beyond thought I reach a state. I refuse to divide it up into words--and what I cannot and do not want to express ends up being the most secret of my secrets. I know that I'm scared of the moments in which I don't use thought and that's a momentary state that is difficult to reach, and which, entirely secret, no longer uses the words with which thoughts are produced. Is not using words to lose your identity? is it getting lost in the harmful essential shadows?
I lose the identity of the world inside myself and exist without guarantees. I achieve whatever is achievable but I live the unachievable and the meaning of me and the world and you isn't obvious. It's fantastic, and I handle myself in these moments with immense delicacy. Is God a form of being? the abstraction that materializes in the nature of all that exists? My roots are in the divine shadows. Drowsy roots. Wavering in the dark shadows.
-- Clarice Lispector, Água Viva, trans. Stefan Tobler, New Directions Press, copyrights 1973 (the Heirs of Clarice Lispector) and 2012 (Stefan Tobler, translation, and Benjamin Moser, introduction), p. 64.
October 2, 2014
"What Did You Learn in School Today?" performed by Pete Seeger, 1964
-- Pete Seeger, "What Did You Learn in School Today?" written by Tom Paxton, performed on the "Tonight in Person" show (BBC), 1964. Accessed via YouTube.
September 29, 2014
Excerpt, "The Retreat from Gettysburg," Brig. Gen. John Imboden, C.S.A., 1887
After dark I set out from Cashtown to gain the head of the column during the night. My orders had been peremptory that there should be no halt for any cause whatever. If an accident should happen to any vehicle, it was immediately to be put out of the road and abandoned. The column moved rapidly, considering the rough roads and the darkness, and from almost every wagon for many miles issued heart-rending wails of agony. For four hours I hurried forward on my way to the front, and in all that time I was never out of hearing of the groans and cries of the wounded and dying. Scarcely one in a hundred had received adequate surgical aid, owing to the demands on the hard-working surgeons from still worse cases that had to be left behind. Many of the wounded in the wagons had been without food for thirty-six hours.
Their torn and bloody clothing, matted and hardened, was rasping the tender, inflamed, and still oozing wounds. Very few of the wagons had even a layer of straw in them, and all were without springs. The road was rough and rocky from the heavy washings of the preceding day. The jolting was enough to have killed strong men, if long exposed to it. From nearly every wagon as the teams trotted on, urged by whip and shout, came such cries and shrieks as these:
'O God! Why can't I die!'
'My God! Will no one have mercy and kill me!'
'Stop! Oh! For God's sake, stop just for one minute; take me out and leave me to die on the roadside.'
'I am dying! I am dying! My poor wife, my dear children, what will become of you?'
Some were simply moaning; some were praying, and others uttering the most fearful oaths and execrations that despair and agony could wring from them; while a majority, with a stoicism sustained by sublime devotion to the cause they fought for, endured without complaint unspeakable tortures, and even spoke words of cheer and comfort to their unhappy comrades of less will or more acute nerves. Occasionally a wagon would be passed from which only low, deep moans could be heard. No help could be rendered to any of the sufferers. No heed could be given to any of their appeals. Mercy and duty to the many forbade the loss of a moment in the vain effort then and there to comply with the prayers of the few. On! On! we must move on. The storm continued, and the darkness was appalling. There was no time even to fill a canteen with water for a dying man; for, except the drivers and the guards, all were wounded and utterly helpless in that vast procession of misery. During this one night I realized more of the horrors of war than I had in all the two preceding years.
-- Brig. Gen. John Imboden (1823-1895), Confederate States of America, from "The Confederate Retreat from Gettysburg," 1887.
September 1, 2014
"The Grapes of Wrath" - Tom Joad's "I'll be there" speech
-- from "The Grapes of Wrath," dir. John Ford (based on The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, 1939), 20th Century Fox, 1940. Tom Joad played by Henry Fonda.
August 26, 2014
"Vespers" by Louise Glück
In your extended absence, you permit me
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report
failure in my assignment, principally
regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come
so often here, while other regions get
twelve weeks of summer. All this
belongs to you: on the other hand,
I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly
multiplying in the rows. I doubt
you have a heart, in our understanding of
that term. You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,
the red leaves of the maple falling
even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible
for these vines.
-- Louise Glück, "Vespers" ["In your extended absence, you permit me"], The Wild Iris, The Ecco Press, 1992.
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report
failure in my assignment, principally
regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come
so often here, while other regions get
twelve weeks of summer. All this
belongs to you: on the other hand,
I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly
multiplying in the rows. I doubt
you have a heart, in our understanding of
that term. You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,
the red leaves of the maple falling
even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible
for these vines.
-- Louise Glück, "Vespers" ["In your extended absence, you permit me"], The Wild Iris, The Ecco Press, 1992.
"Anywhere on this Road" by Lhasa de Sela
-- Lhasa de Sela, "Anywhere on this Road," The Living Road, Audiogram: 2003.
August 9, 2014
Jeremy Scahill at 2013 Socialism Conference
-- Jeremy Scahill, investigative journalist, author, filmmaker
July 6, 2014
Four woodblock prints by Kobayashi Kiyochika, c. 1880
Sumida River by Night (1881)
Night at Nihonbashi (1881)
Night Stalls at Asakusa (1881)
Fireflies at Ochanomizu (1880)
-- Kobayashi Kiyochika (Japan, 1847-1915), from exhibition "Kiyochika: Master of the Night," at Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, DC, March 29–July 27, 2014. All artworks from Robert O. Muller Collection.
June 20, 2014
I Take Back Everything I've Said by Nicanor Parra
Before I go
I'm supposed to get a last wish:
Generous reader
burn this book
It's not at all what I wanted to say
Though it was written in blood
It's not what I wanted to say.
No lot could be sadder than mine
I was defeated by my own shadow:
My words took vengeance on me.
Forgive me, reader, good reader
If I cannot leave you
With a warm embrace, I leave you
With a forced and sad smile.
Maybe that's all I am
But listen to my last word:
I take back everything I've said.
With the greatest bitterness in the world
I take back everything I've said.
-- Nicanor Parra, "I Take Back Everything I've Said," trans. Miller Williams, from The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, eds. Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris, Words Without Borders, 2010, pp. 210-11.
I'm supposed to get a last wish:
Generous reader
burn this book
It's not at all what I wanted to say
Though it was written in blood
It's not what I wanted to say.
No lot could be sadder than mine
I was defeated by my own shadow:
My words took vengeance on me.
Forgive me, reader, good reader
If I cannot leave you
With a warm embrace, I leave you
With a forced and sad smile.
Maybe that's all I am
But listen to my last word:
I take back everything I've said.
With the greatest bitterness in the world
I take back everything I've said.
-- Nicanor Parra, "I Take Back Everything I've Said," trans. Miller Williams, from The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, eds. Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris, Words Without Borders, 2010, pp. 210-11.
May 19, 2014
Phil Ochs, "The Ballad of William Worthy"
-- Phil Ochs, "The Ballad of William Worthy," 1964, Elektra Records.
April 11, 2014
from "Murder by the Book" by Rex Stout, 1951
We were getting reports by phone from Saul and Fred and Orrie, and Friday a little before six Saul came in person. The only reason I wouldn't vote for Saul Panzer for President of the United States is that he would never dress the part. How he goes around New York, almost anywhere, in that faded brown cap and old brown suit, without attracting attention as not belonging, I will never understand. Wolfe has never given him an assignment that he didn't fill better than anyone else could except me, and my argument is why not elect him President, buy him a suit and hat, and see what happens?
-- Rex Stout, Murder by the Book, New York: Bantam, e-book, 2010.
-- Rex Stout, Murder by the Book, New York: Bantam, e-book, 2010.
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