Literature and Art

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Comment by Nancy Bell Scott on July 13, 2011 at 8:40pm

Just want you to know I remain very interested in this discussion and also what you wrote last night, Theresa -- in fact am thinking about it a lot -- but am in a motel room with iffy connection at the moment!   It might be better tonight, and if not, I'm home tomorrow -- to continue with Rilke. . . .

Comment by De Villo Sloan on July 13, 2011 at 11:51am

Hi Nancy & Theresa, thanks for your Rilke translation picks. The work is so subtle I think the translation selection is important. You know of the poet Robert Bly? he did some Rilke translations I don't think work so well. Have not read the Stephen Spender - that would be interesting. The David Young, yes, he did well, I think. Did anyone mention "Sonnets to Orpheus" to go with the "Duino Elegies"? I really like the sonnets but rely on the Al Poulin translations mostly.

Comment by Nancy Bell Scott on July 13, 2011 at 5:21am

Oh yes, small things!  "Small is beautiful."  I bought the book of that title when it first came out only to discover it was too economics-focused to handle.  I like your epiphany, Theresa, and your spur of the moment drawings.  The one of Rilke's terrible angels gave me a start, because over the years, whether in the watercolor, handmade paper, or current collage phase, usually a "spirit" series developed.  Where do you think these probably came from?  Now I'm thinking Rilke's angels.  Here is one from a sketchbook a few years ago (giving it a quick scan for here), and do you think it might be true?

Comment by Nancy Bell Scott on July 13, 2011 at 4:36am

Although I may have read other translations of his sonnets and Letters to a Young Poet (can't recall), DVS, I chose the Stephen Spender & JB Leishman version for the Elegies, probably with the help of my advisor, whose native language was German. Later, when looking at other translations casually in bookstores, I couldn't connect with them.  A year with the Spender & Leishman translation made any other seem clumsy in a way.  Have you read other translations?

 

Poems *about* the elegies -- very interesting idea.  No, no art based on Rilke, and no art that I can think of based on anyone that I haven't known in person.  I tend to work so intuitively that forming a conscious purpose beforehand usually leads to stiffness (see below!).  But I do believe that the art is informed in unknowable ways by the literature that was important to me.

 

Comment by De Villo Sloan on July 13, 2011 at 4:02am

Any Rilke translation into English you prefer?

Comment by Nancy Bell Scott on July 13, 2011 at 3:56am

Thanks Theresa, this was the first (and self-conscious) one, and I am nervous about it but will get over it.  Thank god one arrived -- five went out last Friday, and only afterward did I learn that postcards are now 29 cents.  Your mentioning Rilke today is a bit amazing; I wrote my senior thesis on Rilke's "Duino Elegies"!

Comment by Nancy Bell Scott on July 13, 2011 at 2:34am

I'm glad you enjoyed it, Bifidus.  After 25 years or so, it's probably safe to say it will never leave my mind.

 

And thanks, Theresa.  I hope you will post your cards frequently, or at least now and then.  That's a good one to ponder; I keep going back to think about it.

 

This group should be a good thing for me.  Literature played a huge role in my life for many years.  It was my major in college because I loved it and had grown up reading and writing.  It continued on for quite a long time after college.  Then the connection with it frayed during my years as a freelance copyeditor of nonfiction books.  In fact, since stopping that work eight years ago, it has been pretty hard to read much of anything at all -- just occasionally, and rarely fiction.  Instead, my love of it began to show up, usually subtly, in my artwork.

 

Ok, that's enough, because I'm starting to spill the letter in my head! and need to save it for my hand, and for you.

Comment by Bifidus Jones on July 12, 2011 at 10:19pm

Beautiful poem, Nancy

Comment by Nancy Bell Scott on July 12, 2011 at 7:56pm

I am still alive

the little falcons will

   tell you

the stars will tell you

I will still come back.

Don't cry yet

spotted butterfly

The stones I piled to

   mark my way

have not yet fallen down

Just ask them.

 

[old Quechua poem, Peru]

 

Early collage of mine focusing on the poem -- the poem being what's significant here.

Comment by Nancy Bell Scott on July 12, 2011 at 7:46pm

Theresa, your Roethke card is most interesting (great colors, too).  Was it here from the start?  Because as you probably know I've been taken up with matters asemic and my head is spinning.  I want you to know, though, that I'm starting a letter in my head for your Letter Project, and it will address my complicated relationship with literature, which has been both very strong and then tired at different times -- but I would say it is always important to me, and it is intertwined with my visual art.  The letter probably should go here too, how to handle?  (Or no?)  You have some time to answer, since so far it's only in my head!

 

I want to contribute something here that I refound last night among my papers -- not classic, but an old Quechua poem from Peru, poet's name unknown.  In fact the poem itself seems to be mostly unknown (have never been able to find it online anywhere).  I have loved it ever since a close friend/lover gave it to me at a painful time (long ago).  It was included in a very early collage of mine, which is why I thought of it for this group.  I'll post the art below the poem, but remember it was done years ago, and for me the important thing is the poem.

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