Literature and Art

Comment

Comment by De Villo Sloan on July 13, 2011 at 10:13pm

Here it is. Hemingway wrote a parody of Sherwood Anderson called "The Torrents of Spring":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Torrents_of_Spring

James Wright, yip, well, I think we'll certainly have some interesting discussions and maybe make some interesting mail-art.

Comment by De Villo Sloan on July 13, 2011 at 9:48pm

Congrats on your acceptance in Gargoyle. The only journal by that name I know - there could be others - is/was based in Washington, DC or that area. 

 

I like Nancy's sketchbook drawing below, a lot. I think Bly also is associated with "Deep Image" verse or something like that? I come across references to that a lot. Probably fair to say Bly comes out of surrealism, more or less, or at least at notable points in his career.

 

Yip, Winesburg is fantastic, IMHO. What was the...? Do you know if Hemingway mocked Sherwood Anderson's style or something somewhere because it was viewed as so simplistic? I think more like: deceptively simplistic.

 

Fun group, anyway.

Comment by De Villo Sloan on July 13, 2011 at 9:17pm

Nancy, I meant to add - I use the Stephen Mitchell for the elegies - it somehow reads smoothly for me. So you like the 9th elegy in particular? I'll have to re-read it. Al Poulin is a little clunky, but I think he had a good understanding of "Sonnets to Orpheus." Yes - Robert Bly - I saw these Rilke translations he did, attempting to put Rilke into Mid-western vernacular. It came out like a country & western song - I really couldn't believe what an atrocity it was. I only mention it because I thought Bly had such a musical ear otherwise. These were in a journal, I think, and maybe an isolated incident.

 

BTW, I am a huge Sherwood Anderson fan - perhaps one of the most original stylists in the English language - maybe that's an overblown opinion, but I share your admiration - I think, not sure, he got stylistic ideas from Gertrude Stein.

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.

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