Its been a swell day.
A walk in the lovely Humboldthaim Park and lunch, on turkey
stew, with Paul …
Then back to Invalidenstrasse for an afternoon with my
Victorian Vocalists…
And suddenly it was 6pm.
The sun was gleaming encouragingly, the cellar was bare,
and brother John’s newest book was staring invitingly across the table at me ..
Three stones with one bird
I pulled on my harem pants, picked up the book, and headed
out into the sunshine. Well, not wholly the sunshine. I headed for the Katz
Orange. Not for a meal (thank you Alpenstück lunch!) but for one of Oliver’s
cocktails. One. I, who, a couple of months ago, had never tasted a cocktail.
With my delicious ‘Three shades of green’, I opened the
book. Well, the first thing anyone does when he opens a book is -- look for
himself in the index and credits. Oh blimey! This book has been a wee while in
the making … did I translate forty odd poems from the French for this? Well,
some I remember – the best (Verhaeren) and the worst (Renée Vivien, Irène
Hamoir) – and I know I did Baudelaire and the likes, but some I don’t remember
at all!
John’s book, 52 euros,
is a remarkable thing. An A to Z of European poetry, one woman and one manpoet
for each letter of the alphabet, and the writers chosen from all Continental
countries and from all ages. And, one may say, of a range of fame and ability. People
like I, and some of my international friends, have literally translated the
originals into English, and John has ‘re-poemed’ the result. There is
absolutely no doubt that he has vastly improved, by his adaptations, some of
the originals!
There are some curious poet-people in his A to Z. An awful lot who
lived and died with TB, or in sanatoriums. A lot who were depressives. In life
and in politics. A selection of lesbian ladies. Hardly a one who seems to have
had a happy life. But only one who got
her head chopped off.
The array of poetic voices, however, is delicious. For not all of them
were neurotic, tubercular, sexually inverted and early-dying. For every
self-centred, dreary Maeterlinck and Yourcenar (both translated by me, so I
know) there is a handful of wonderful poets of whom I have never heard …the
fabulous 19th century Giuseppe Giusti with his ‘Mr Snail’, the convival Jens
Zetlitz with his 18th century drinking song, Edith Sodergran with her brief tale of the ‘Three
Sisters’ – great stuff! And there is always the likes of Verhaeren,
of course, glorious in any language. But superb in English.
As I made my delighted voyage of discovery through the
book’s pages, Oliver exchanged my ‘Three Shades of Green’ for a ‘Mezcal Mule’
and finally an original kind of ‘Margarita’. No wonder two fascinating hours went so quickly
…
Poetry, sunshine and a few under the belt…
Hard to beat.
1 comment:
PS Verhaeren grabbed us ... so much that we went on and 'did' his whole volume .... <3
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