WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.890 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.890 --> 00:00:05.910 align:middle line:84% An observation of Brodsky's about the 00:00:05.910 --> 00:00:11.340 align:middle line:84% faceted subjectivities and the loss of a centralized subject 00:00:11.340 --> 00:00:17.370 align:middle line:84% in so much modernism, from the time of Eliot 00:00:17.370 --> 00:00:21.450 align:middle line:84% on forward, and not only in anglophone culture, 00:00:21.450 --> 00:00:27.390 align:middle line:84% certainly, is that it runs so much against the grain of what 00:00:27.390 --> 00:00:29.520 align:middle line:84% is purported to be modernism, which 00:00:29.520 --> 00:00:36.630 align:middle line:84% would be the modernism of anti-romantic reaction, 00:00:36.630 --> 00:00:43.350 align:middle line:84% a modernism of the cleansed poem, the poem cleansed 00:00:43.350 --> 00:00:51.966 align:middle line:84% of ornamentation and with a linearity, 00:00:51.966 --> 00:00:54.780 align:middle line:84% of a sort of Bauhaus logical cant. 00:00:54.780 --> 00:00:59.940 align:middle line:84% The poem stripped down, the poem as a machine, as William Carlos 00:00:59.940 --> 00:01:04.058 align:middle line:84% Williams once spoke of it, borrowing from imagery 00:01:04.058 --> 00:01:08.920 align:middle line:84% of Le Corbusier, the house as a machine, a very 00:01:08.920 --> 00:01:10.390 align:middle line:90% unattractive idea, indeed. 00:01:10.390 --> 00:01:13.060 align:middle line:90% 00:01:13.060 --> 00:01:17.310 align:middle line:84% And the poem as a machine is also not an attractive idea. 00:01:17.310 --> 00:01:21.610 align:middle line:84% A machine made with words, is what Williams called it. 00:01:21.610 --> 00:01:24.415 align:middle line:84% I think Williams was just trying to be modern. 00:01:24.415 --> 00:01:28.060 align:middle line:90% 00:01:28.060 --> 00:01:32.110 align:middle line:84% But certain sort of ferocious constructivists 00:01:32.110 --> 00:01:34.630 align:middle line:84% have actually tried to go there, to make the poem 00:01:34.630 --> 00:01:38.110 align:middle line:90% as a machine made of words. 00:01:38.110 --> 00:01:41.470 align:middle line:84% The problems with that are obvious. 00:01:41.470 --> 00:01:45.460 align:middle line:84% I want to put together a couple of unlikely people, 00:01:45.460 --> 00:01:54.790 align:middle line:84% starting with Aimé Césaire and Fernando Pessoa, 00:01:54.790 --> 00:01:56.890 align:middle line:84% just in a kind of sketchy fashion. 00:01:56.890 --> 00:01:59.830 align:middle line:90% 00:01:59.830 --> 00:02:05.410 align:middle line:84% Aimé Césaire, a poet born about a century ago, 00:02:05.410 --> 00:02:11.050 align:middle line:84% wrote extremely influential essays and became aligned with 00:02:11.050 --> 00:02:14.830 align:middle line:84% those intellectuals who were trying to take back 00:02:14.830 --> 00:02:29.000 align:middle line:84% their culture from the colonial forces of both the English 00:02:29.000 --> 00:02:32.960 align:middle line:84% and the French, and, in their own ways, the Americans, 00:02:32.960 --> 00:02:35.780 align:middle line:90% peripherally. 00:02:35.780 --> 00:02:40.730 align:middle line:84% He was, of course, a poet of extraordinary influence. 00:02:40.730 --> 00:02:42.710 align:middle line:84% But what is most interesting is certainly, 00:02:42.710 --> 00:02:45.700 align:middle line:90% from one point of view, is how-- 00:02:45.700 --> 00:02:49.070 align:middle line:84% and this is exemplified by many poets in Latin America 00:02:49.070 --> 00:02:51.080 align:middle line:90% and elsewhere-- 00:02:51.080 --> 00:02:56.900 align:middle line:84% he took the vanguardism of the new Europe, which 00:02:56.900 --> 00:02:59.420 align:middle line:84% naturally, being a surrealist, was also 00:02:59.420 --> 00:03:03.710 align:middle line:84% sympathetic to anti-colonial liberation movements 00:03:03.710 --> 00:03:08.260 align:middle line:84% and radical political movements in the new world, 00:03:08.260 --> 00:03:11.370 align:middle line:84% but also in central Europe, and elsewhere. 00:03:11.370 --> 00:03:19.220 align:middle line:84% And took the rhetoric of the surrealists and, in a sense, 00:03:19.220 --> 00:03:21.530 align:middle line:90% pidginized it. 00:03:21.530 --> 00:03:25.760 align:middle line:84% He colonized the language, so to speak, of the colonizer, 00:03:25.760 --> 00:03:28.610 align:middle line:84% by means of these vanguardist practices that'd 00:03:28.610 --> 00:03:29.690 align:middle line:90% been established. 00:03:29.690 --> 00:03:31.490 align:middle line:90% He made it his own. 00:03:31.490 --> 00:03:36.350 align:middle line:84% So what he established was not simply a provincial surrealism, 00:03:36.350 --> 00:03:44.180 align:middle line:84% but, in fact, a mode of Black rhetorical speech and protest, 00:03:44.180 --> 00:03:50.000 align:middle line:84% with a tremendous power of subversion. 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:55.970 align:middle line:84% So he deconstructed voice, and, in a funny way, 00:03:55.970 --> 00:04:03.800 align:middle line:84% just as Fernando Pessoa was to do, resurrected it again. 00:04:03.800 --> 00:04:08.930 align:middle line:84% So Césaire's European surrealism is creolized. 00:04:08.930 --> 00:04:13.340 align:middle line:84% And he ends up with a mix of Europe, Caribbean, Whitman, 00:04:13.340 --> 00:04:19.430 align:middle line:84% jazz, and such things as Yoruba praise song from Africa, all 00:04:19.430 --> 00:04:21.350 align:middle line:90% in a particular mix. 00:04:21.350 --> 00:04:27.320 align:middle line:84% In a sense, he can be said to reverse Mallarmé's sense 00:04:27.320 --> 00:04:34.550 align:middle line:84% of the job of the poet, which is picked up by Eliot and repeated 00:04:34.550 --> 00:04:39.230 align:middle line:84% in "The Wasteland," to purify the language of the tribe. 00:04:39.230 --> 00:04:43.700 align:middle line:84% In a sense, Césaire's glory becomes to pidginize 00:04:43.700 --> 00:04:47.870 align:middle line:84% the language of the tribe, to corrupt the language 00:04:47.870 --> 00:04:54.740 align:middle line:84% of the mother tongue, to make it inclusive and impure 00:04:54.740 --> 00:04:59.615 align:middle line:84% and various, in both its means and its goals. 00:04:59.615 --> 00:05:03.540 align:middle line:90% 00:05:03.540 --> 00:05:06.780 align:middle line:84% He's inscribing a kind of rift in the master 00:05:06.780 --> 00:05:11.100 align:middle line:84% tongue and its grammar, by means of a multiplication 00:05:11.100 --> 00:05:15.960 align:middle line:84% both of forms and of voices within the work, 00:05:15.960 --> 00:05:22.500 align:middle line:84% to create a language of subversion and resistance. 00:05:22.500 --> 00:05:25.170 align:middle line:84% Naturally, some of this had its beginnings 00:05:25.170 --> 00:05:27.210 align:middle line:84% among the vanguardist movements themselves 00:05:27.210 --> 00:05:30.090 align:middle line:90% and some of the modernists. 00:05:30.090 --> 00:05:38.130 align:middle line:84% And Césaire and his heirs never failed to pay homage to that. 00:05:38.130 --> 00:05:42.810 align:middle line:84% On the contrary, heirs such as Kamau Brathwaite-- 00:05:42.810 --> 00:05:45.390 align:middle line:84% are any of you familiar with Kamau's work? 00:05:45.390 --> 00:05:49.230 align:middle line:84% He really inherits that extraordinary insurgency. 00:05:49.230 --> 00:05:53.700 align:middle line:84% Kamau himself was born on Barbados. 00:05:53.700 --> 00:05:57.270 align:middle line:84% And has carried it out to even more formal-- 00:05:57.270 --> 00:06:04.240 align:middle line:84% an extreme form of radical notation, let's say. 00:06:04.240 --> 00:06:10.000 align:middle line:84% And also, like many of the other Caribbean folks 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:13.030 align:middle line:84% and the intellectually of vast learning 00:06:13.030 --> 00:06:17.470 align:middle line:84% has him writing, oh, political writing and so on. 00:06:17.470 --> 00:06:18.670 align:middle line:90% We have NourbeSe Philip. 00:06:18.670 --> 00:06:21.010 align:middle line:84% We have now a generation of women poets 00:06:21.010 --> 00:06:24.970 align:middle line:84% and prose writers also coming out of the Caribbean. 00:06:24.970 --> 00:06:31.540 align:middle line:84% And taking things such as the discoveries of the Harlem 00:06:31.540 --> 00:06:34.660 align:middle line:84% Renaissance turning them to their own uses. 00:06:34.660 --> 00:06:38.140 align:middle line:84% And then in turn, through people like Nathaniel Mackey, 00:06:38.140 --> 00:06:42.190 align:middle line:84% the African-American poet, returning them 00:06:42.190 --> 00:06:44.130 align:middle line:84% in a different form to the United States. 00:06:44.130 --> 00:06:47.950 align:middle line:84% So we get our jazz back and our Whitman back through them. 00:06:47.950 --> 00:06:53.860 align:middle line:84% And they in turn influence not only African-American practice 00:06:53.860 --> 00:06:56.590 align:middle line:84% but other practices through that, so 00:06:56.590 --> 00:07:01.870 align:middle line:84% a very, very interesting cycling or circularity or circulation 00:07:01.870 --> 00:07:07.180 align:middle line:84% of the songs that is to me exemplified 00:07:07.180 --> 00:07:10.090 align:middle line:84% in Cesaire's work, which is a kind 00:07:10.090 --> 00:07:13.600 align:middle line:90% of echo chamber of accents. 00:07:13.600 --> 00:07:15.890 align:middle line:84% His French-- we won't be reading him French. 00:07:15.890 --> 00:07:20.260 align:middle line:84% But the translations of Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith 00:07:20.260 --> 00:07:23.635 align:middle line:84% do very much get the fact of the [INAUDIBLE] 00:07:23.635 --> 00:07:27.680 align:middle line:90% of the French he's working with. 00:07:27.680 --> 00:07:29.500 align:middle line:84% Let me read you one or two things here. 00:07:29.500 --> 00:07:40.995 align:middle line:90% 00:07:40.995 --> 00:07:43.417 align:middle line:84% I pulled these out not out of a collective 00:07:43.417 --> 00:07:45.000 align:middle line:84% but-- well they're in that collective. 00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:47.700 align:middle line:84% But I just pulled them out of Pierre Joris and Jerry 00:07:47.700 --> 00:07:52.920 align:middle line:84% Rothenberg's great anthology of 20th century poetry that 00:07:52.920 --> 00:07:56.880 align:middle line:84% focuses on innovative modernism and innovative evangelism 00:07:56.880 --> 00:07:59.490 align:middle line:90% around the world. 00:07:59.490 --> 00:08:02.100 align:middle line:84% This is called "Ex-Voto for a Shipwreck" by Cesaire. 00:08:02.100 --> 00:08:04.950 align:middle line:90% 00:08:04.950 --> 00:08:08.820 align:middle line:84% "Hele Hele the King is a great king. 00:08:08.820 --> 00:08:11.370 align:middle line:84% That his majesty deign to look up my anus 00:08:11.370 --> 00:08:13.950 align:middle line:90% to see if it contains diamonds. 00:08:13.950 --> 00:08:16.620 align:middle line:84% Let his majesty deign to explore my mouth 00:08:16.620 --> 00:08:20.070 align:middle line:84% to see how many carats it contains. 00:08:20.070 --> 00:08:21.460 align:middle line:90% Laugh tom-tom. 00:08:21.460 --> 00:08:22.800 align:middle line:90% Laugh tom-tom. 00:08:22.800 --> 00:08:24.660 align:middle line:90% I carry the King's litter. 00:08:24.660 --> 00:08:26.550 align:middle line:90% I roll out the King's rug. 00:08:26.550 --> 00:08:28.110 align:middle line:90% I am the King's rug. 00:08:28.110 --> 00:08:30.660 align:middle line:90% I carry scrofula for the King. 00:08:30.660 --> 00:08:32.750 align:middle line:90% I am the King's parasol. 00:08:32.750 --> 00:08:37.140 align:middle line:84% Laugh, laugh, tom-toms of the kraals, 00:08:37.140 --> 00:08:40.440 align:middle line:84% tom-toms of mines that laugh up their shafts. 00:08:40.440 --> 00:08:45.450 align:middle line:84% Sacred tom toms laughing about your rat and hyena teeth right 00:08:45.450 --> 00:08:47.300 align:middle line:90% of the missionaries' faces. 00:08:47.300 --> 00:08:51.090 align:middle line:84% Tom-toms in the forest, tom-toms in the desert. 00:08:51.090 --> 00:08:53.040 align:middle line:90% Weep, tom-tom. 00:08:53.040 --> 00:08:57.990 align:middle line:84% Weep, tom-tom, burned down to the impetuous silence 00:08:57.990 --> 00:09:01.440 align:middle line:84% of our shoreless tears and roll, roll softly 00:09:01.440 --> 00:09:03.690 align:middle line:90% no longer than a speck of coal. 00:09:03.690 --> 00:09:07.280 align:middle line:84% The pure carbon duration of our endless major pangs. 00:09:07.280 --> 00:09:10.560 align:middle line:84% Roll, roll heavy speechless deliriums. 00:09:10.560 --> 00:09:13.110 align:middle line:90% Russet lions without manes. 00:09:13.110 --> 00:09:16.830 align:middle line:84% Tom-toms which would protect my three souls, my brain, 00:09:16.830 --> 00:09:18.270 align:middle line:90% my heart, my liver. 00:09:18.270 --> 00:09:21.840 align:middle line:84% Hard tom-toms which very loudly uphold my star. 00:09:21.840 --> 00:09:25.680 align:middle line:84% Wind dwelling over the blasted rock of my Black head. 00:09:25.680 --> 00:09:30.180 align:middle line:84% And you brother tom-tom, for whom sometimes all day long I 00:09:30.180 --> 00:09:33.306 align:middle line:84% keep a word now hot now cool in my mouth, 00:09:33.306 --> 00:09:36.220 align:middle line:84% like the little-known taste of vengeance. 00:09:36.220 --> 00:09:38.770 align:middle line:90% Tom-toms of the Kalaari. 00:09:38.770 --> 00:09:42.640 align:middle line:84% Tom-toms of Good Hope that cut the cake with their threats. 00:09:42.640 --> 00:09:44.880 align:middle line:90% O, tom-tom of Zululand. 00:09:44.880 --> 00:09:47.040 align:middle line:90% Tom-tom of Chaka. 00:09:47.040 --> 00:09:49.030 align:middle line:90% Tom-tom, tom-tom. 00:09:49.030 --> 00:09:51.430 align:middle line:84% King, our mountains are mares in heat 00:09:51.430 --> 00:09:54.880 align:middle line:84% caught in the full convulsion of bad blood. 00:09:54.880 --> 00:09:57.250 align:middle line:84% King, our planes, our rivers are vexed 00:09:57.250 --> 00:10:00.460 align:middle line:84% by the supplies of future factions drifting 00:10:00.460 --> 00:10:03.490 align:middle line:84% in from the sea and your caravels. 00:10:03.490 --> 00:10:07.450 align:middle line:84% King, our stones are lamps burning in the hope widowed 00:10:07.450 --> 00:10:08.920 align:middle line:90% from its dragon. 00:10:08.920 --> 00:10:13.270 align:middle line:84% King, our trees are the unfolded shade taken by a flame 00:10:13.270 --> 00:10:16.330 align:middle line:84% to big for our hearts, too weak for a dungeon. 00:10:16.330 --> 00:10:19.810 align:middle line:84% Laugh, laugh then tom-toms of Kaffraria, 00:10:19.810 --> 00:10:21.820 align:middle line:84% like the scorpion's beautiful question 00:10:21.820 --> 00:10:25.360 align:middle line:84% mark drawn in pollen on the canvas of the sky 00:10:25.360 --> 00:10:27.790 align:middle line:84% and of our brains at midnight, like the quiver 00:10:27.790 --> 00:10:32.440 align:middle line:84% of a sea reptile charmed by the anticipation, anticipation 00:10:32.440 --> 00:10:35.980 align:middle line:84% of bad weather of a little upside-down laugh of the sea 00:10:35.980 --> 00:10:40.210 align:middle line:84% in in the sunken ship's gorgeous portholes." 00:10:40.210 --> 00:10:43.690 align:middle line:84% You can certainly hear praise song in that. 00:10:43.690 --> 00:10:48.160 align:middle line:84% But most importantly, it is that sense, 00:10:48.160 --> 00:10:55.310 align:middle line:84% in a metaphorical way, of what pidgin was meant to do, 00:10:55.310 --> 00:10:59.980 align:middle line:84% which was to create a language of mobility, 00:10:59.980 --> 00:11:03.670 align:middle line:84% a nomadic language that would speak 00:11:03.670 --> 00:11:09.310 align:middle line:84% beyond national boundaries, and that would be improvised, 00:11:09.310 --> 00:11:12.520 align:middle line:84% and that would be in its own way both an international language 00:11:12.520 --> 00:11:14.950 align:middle line:90% and a secret language. 00:11:14.950 --> 00:11:19.630 align:middle line:84% The language not understandable in the centers of power. 00:11:19.630 --> 00:11:28.790 align:middle line:90% 00:11:28.790 --> 00:11:32.000 align:middle line:84% I'll just read a tiny bit from a "Notebook of a Return 00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:33.690 align:middle line:84% to the Native Land," which was maybe 00:11:33.690 --> 00:11:35.150 align:middle line:90% his most influential work. 00:11:35.150 --> 00:11:38.260 align:middle line:90% 00:11:38.260 --> 00:11:40.420 align:middle line:90% "Islands, scars of the water. 00:11:40.420 --> 00:11:42.430 align:middle line:90% Islands, evidence of wounds. 00:11:42.430 --> 00:11:43.780 align:middle line:90% Islands, crumbs. 00:11:43.780 --> 00:11:45.430 align:middle line:90% Islands unformed. 00:11:45.430 --> 00:11:48.640 align:middle line:84% Islands, cheap paper shredded upon the water. 00:11:48.640 --> 00:11:51.550 align:middle line:84% Islands, stumps skewered side by side 00:11:51.550 --> 00:11:53.980 align:middle line:90% on a flaming sort of the sun. 00:11:53.980 --> 00:11:58.600 align:middle line:84% Mulish reason, you will not stop me from casting on the waters 00:11:58.600 --> 00:12:00.495 align:middle line:84% at the mercy of the currents of my thirst. 00:12:00.495 --> 00:12:03.700 align:middle line:90% Your form, deformed islands. 00:12:03.700 --> 00:12:08.110 align:middle line:90% Your end, my defiance." 00:12:08.110 --> 00:12:09.480 align:middle line:90% Let's see. 00:12:09.480 --> 00:12:13.690 align:middle line:84% There's a word that's used in cultural theory 00:12:13.690 --> 00:12:16.480 align:middle line:84% about that is Calibanizing and cannibalizing. 00:12:16.480 --> 00:12:20.710 align:middle line:90% 00:12:20.710 --> 00:12:23.320 align:middle line:84% Turning the language back as Caliban does. 00:12:23.320 --> 00:12:29.678 align:middle line:84% The language of the master back in a storm of productive fury 00:12:29.678 --> 00:12:30.220 align:middle line:90% and critique. 00:12:30.220 --> 00:12:36.310 align:middle line:90% 00:12:36.310 --> 00:12:38.740 align:middle line:84% From an anglophone writer of the time. 00:12:38.740 --> 00:12:40.810 align:middle line:90% Naturally, he was francophone. 00:12:40.810 --> 00:12:44.980 align:middle line:84% I just want to quote this little bit of Kamau Brathwaite 00:12:44.980 --> 00:12:48.310 align:middle line:84% from a book of his called X/Self. 00:12:48.310 --> 00:12:49.510 align:middle line:90% This came before-- 00:12:49.510 --> 00:12:51.790 align:middle line:84% Kamau has now launched himself out 00:12:51.790 --> 00:12:59.230 align:middle line:84% into the wild forests of composition 00:12:59.230 --> 00:13:03.560 align:middle line:84% on the computer with the infinite possibilities now 00:13:03.560 --> 00:13:12.480 align:middle line:84% of different type faces and juju magic of the electronics. 00:13:12.480 --> 00:13:15.900 align:middle line:84% But he was edging toward that in a book 00:13:15.900 --> 00:13:22.720 align:middle line:84% like X/Self, where there's echoing, 00:13:22.720 --> 00:13:26.226 align:middle line:84% there's multi-phonics and the jazz sense of that. 00:13:26.226 --> 00:13:33.480 align:middle line:84% His final volume of a trilogy he did at that time. 00:13:33.480 --> 00:13:38.595 align:middle line:90% And it celebrates mixed origins. 00:13:38.595 --> 00:13:41.430 align:middle line:84% Oddly enough he was a poet who was early on 00:13:41.430 --> 00:13:44.730 align:middle line:84% is influenced by Elliott and by Pound. 00:13:44.730 --> 00:13:46.680 align:middle line:84% But at the same time ideologically 00:13:46.680 --> 00:13:49.850 align:middle line:84% overtones Elliott in particular, which 00:13:49.850 --> 00:13:55.650 align:middle line:84% is his personal horror of ugliness and impure blood 00:13:55.650 --> 00:13:56.460 align:middle line:90% and so on. 00:13:56.460 --> 00:13:58.480 align:middle line:84% Though his poetry is not horrified by it. 00:13:58.480 --> 00:14:00.670 align:middle line:90% But Elliot himself is. 00:14:00.670 --> 00:14:02.900 align:middle line:84% By mixing European, and Amerindian, 00:14:02.900 --> 00:14:04.740 align:middle line:90% and African, and Maroon sources. 00:14:04.740 --> 00:14:08.530 align:middle line:90% 00:14:08.530 --> 00:14:11.050 align:middle line:84% So here is the "Young Caliban howling 00:14:11.050 --> 00:14:17.100 align:middle line:84% for his tongue" in Kamau Brathwaite's words in X/Self. 00:14:17.100 --> 00:14:20.200 align:middle line:84% "The new man is nubile and has made his choice 00:14:20.200 --> 00:14:23.920 align:middle line:84% as priest, or politician, police, or poet, choir boy, 00:14:23.920 --> 00:14:25.030 align:middle line:90% or cocksman. 00:14:25.030 --> 00:14:27.040 align:middle line:84% Da Vinci was the last of the genies, 00:14:27.040 --> 00:14:32.380 align:middle line:84% and he knew it, though we didn't seem to believe in it then. 00:14:32.380 --> 00:14:35.500 align:middle line:84% Now the word belongs to Machiavelli and Philip 00:14:35.500 --> 00:14:39.310 align:middle line:84% II of Spain and to that calculating Calvin. 00:14:39.310 --> 00:14:41.460 align:middle line:84% Is them that working all night long 00:14:41.460 --> 00:14:43.760 align:middle line:84% in the high light executive suites 00:14:43.760 --> 00:14:46.770 align:middle line:84% on all the national security commissions and all 00:14:46.770 --> 00:14:48.660 align:middle line:90% the full plenary sessions. 00:14:48.660 --> 00:14:51.850 align:middle line:84% Is then what was ripe what is wrote in the paper. 00:14:51.850 --> 00:14:54.430 align:middle line:84% Is then the master gunners in the sweating three-piece 00:14:54.430 --> 00:14:54.930 align:middle line:90% suits." 00:14:54.930 --> 00:14:58.830 align:middle line:90% 00:14:58.830 --> 00:15:02.370 align:middle line:84% A constellation, I guess, of voices. 00:15:02.370 --> 00:15:09.960 align:middle line:84% And Kamau himself is from Barbados [INAUDIBLE] 00:15:09.960 --> 00:15:16.975 align:middle line:84% remember may have lived since 1933, a decade before I was, 00:15:16.975 --> 00:15:17.475 align:middle line:90% exactly. 00:15:17.475 --> 00:15:23.240 align:middle line:90% 00:15:23.240 --> 00:15:26.180 align:middle line:84% The figure of Fernando Pessoa, who some of you 00:15:26.180 --> 00:15:34.910 align:middle line:84% undoubtedly will know, in odd juxtaposition, somewhat roughly 00:15:34.910 --> 00:15:38.900 align:middle line:84% contemporary actually with Colonel Cesaire, 00:15:38.900 --> 00:15:47.540 align:middle line:84% Portuguese poet who worked in a welter of projections 00:15:47.540 --> 00:15:49.490 align:middle line:90% of voices. 00:15:49.490 --> 00:15:54.170 align:middle line:84% He created what are called heteronyms: 00:15:54.170 --> 00:16:01.700 align:middle line:84% figures, fictitious poets, who were real-- 00:16:01.700 --> 00:16:03.140 align:middle line:90% Ricardo Reyes, Álvaro de Campos. 00:16:03.140 --> 00:16:12.230 align:middle line:90% 00:16:12.230 --> 00:16:15.150 align:middle line:84% Let me read a little passage I wrote about him just to-- 00:16:15.150 --> 00:16:17.300 align:middle line:90% that's the easiest for me. 00:16:17.300 --> 00:16:19.040 align:middle line:84% "There's a future of negativity whom 00:16:19.040 --> 00:16:20.990 align:middle line:84% I must at least mention in relation 00:16:20.990 --> 00:16:23.070 align:middle line:84% to the questions of concern here. 00:16:23.070 --> 00:16:25.370 align:middle line:84% And that is the great Portuguese poet Fernando 00:16:25.370 --> 00:16:31.820 align:middle line:84% Pessoa, who was born in 1888 and died of drink in 1935. 00:16:31.820 --> 00:16:34.550 align:middle line:84% Under the assumption that he is still little known here, 00:16:34.550 --> 00:16:37.220 align:middle line:84% certainly much less than he is throughout Europe 00:16:37.220 --> 00:16:39.290 align:middle line:84% and the Portuguese speaking world, 00:16:39.290 --> 00:16:41.180 align:middle line:84% I'll summarize a few details just 00:16:41.180 --> 00:16:43.820 align:middle line:90% to gesture toward his work. 00:16:43.820 --> 00:16:46.100 align:middle line:84% My main guides are a little text on Pessoa 00:16:46.100 --> 00:16:49.670 align:middle line:84% by the novelist Antonio Tabucchi. 00:16:49.670 --> 00:16:52.100 align:middle line:84% And Richard Zenith's very informative introduction 00:16:52.100 --> 00:16:54.770 align:middle line:84% to his volume of excellent translations 00:16:54.770 --> 00:16:57.680 align:middle line:84% entitled Fernando Pessoa and Company. 00:16:57.680 --> 00:17:00.470 align:middle line:84% I see that you have Richard Zenith's doing 00:17:00.470 --> 00:17:02.220 align:middle line:90% the selective prose over there. 00:17:02.220 --> 00:17:02.720 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:17:02.720 --> 00:17:07.460 align:middle line:84% There's a companion volume of selected poetry. 00:17:07.460 --> 00:17:09.500 align:middle line:84% "Pessoa spent his life constructing 00:17:09.500 --> 00:17:12.859 align:middle line:84% a labyrinth of selves and non-selves 00:17:12.859 --> 00:17:15.410 align:middle line:84% and placing them in conversation and argument 00:17:15.410 --> 00:17:18.380 align:middle line:84% with one another and one another's work. 00:17:18.380 --> 00:17:20.270 align:middle line:90% These he called heteronyms. 00:17:20.270 --> 00:17:23.359 align:middle line:84% And they must be distinguished from the familiar personae 00:17:23.359 --> 00:17:26.780 align:middle line:84% of modernism such Pound's "Mauberley", 00:17:26.780 --> 00:17:30.770 align:middle line:84% Rilke's "Malte Laurids Brigge", H.D.'s "Helen", 00:17:30.770 --> 00:17:34.100 align:middle line:84% Valéry's "Monsieur Teste", Eliot's "Prufrock". 00:17:34.100 --> 00:17:37.970 align:middle line:84% By the way Pessoa spent his life constructing their groans, 00:17:37.970 --> 00:17:42.110 align:middle line:84% replacing himself with them and erasing his traces 00:17:42.110 --> 00:17:45.290 align:middle line:90% through them. 00:17:45.290 --> 00:17:48.050 align:middle line:84% By the end we seem to be witnessing an elaborate shadow 00:17:48.050 --> 00:17:51.200 align:middle line:84% puppet play where the puppeteer has vanished 00:17:51.200 --> 00:17:52.645 align:middle line:90% or become a shadow of himself. 00:17:52.645 --> 00:17:56.030 align:middle line:90% 00:17:56.030 --> 00:17:58.430 align:middle line:84% As Zenith states, no one took the game as far 00:17:58.430 --> 00:18:00.890 align:middle line:84% as Pessoa, who gave up his own life 00:18:00.890 --> 00:18:05.000 align:middle line:84% to confer quasi real substance on the trinity of co-poets 00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:07.700 align:middle line:90% he designated as heteronyms. 00:18:07.700 --> 00:18:10.970 align:middle line:84% Giving each a personal biography, psychology, 00:18:10.970 --> 00:18:14.630 align:middle line:84% politics, aesthetics, religion, and physique. 00:18:14.630 --> 00:18:18.230 align:middle line:84% Alberto Cairo, considered the master by the other two, 00:18:18.230 --> 00:18:21.590 align:middle line:84% was an ingenuous unlettered man who lived in the country 00:18:21.590 --> 00:18:23.360 align:middle line:90% and had no profession. 00:18:23.360 --> 00:18:26.840 align:middle line:84% Ricardo Reyes was a doctor and classicist who wrote odes 00:18:26.840 --> 00:18:28.550 align:middle line:90% in the style of Horace. 00:18:28.550 --> 00:18:30.920 align:middle line:84% Álvaro de Campos, a naval engineer, 00:18:30.920 --> 00:18:34.310 align:middle line:84% started out as an exuberant futurist with a Walt 00:18:34.310 --> 00:18:35.780 align:middle line:90% Whitman-esque voice. 00:18:35.780 --> 00:18:38.690 align:middle line:84% But over time, he came to sound more 00:18:38.690 --> 00:18:42.150 align:middle line:90% like a mopey existentialist. 00:18:42.150 --> 00:18:45.640 align:middle line:84% As Zenith notes, the supreme fiction was Pessoa's orthonymic 00:18:45.640 --> 00:18:49.910 align:middle line:84% creation, the poet known as Fernando Pessoa, 00:18:49.910 --> 00:18:53.420 align:middle line:84% not to be confused with Fernando Pessoa, 00:18:53.420 --> 00:18:57.080 align:middle line:84% if indeed there can be said to have been a Fernando Pessoa, 00:18:57.080 --> 00:19:01.700 align:middle line:84% since none other than Álvaro de Campos denies that he, Pessoa, 00:19:01.700 --> 00:19:03.890 align:middle line:90% ever existed. 00:19:03.890 --> 00:19:06.110 align:middle line:84% Not just a labyrinth of discourse, 00:19:06.110 --> 00:19:10.430 align:middle line:84% but one with mirrored walls and a hydra-headed creature hidden 00:19:10.430 --> 00:19:11.450 align:middle line:90% deep within. 00:19:11.450 --> 00:19:15.260 align:middle line:84% Or perhaps the labyrinth is simply empty. 00:19:15.260 --> 00:19:19.060 align:middle line:84% Here's a poem, a nihilistic parody of a symbolist voyage 00:19:19.060 --> 00:19:23.340 align:middle line:84% imaginaire by the very same Álvaro de Campos, 00:19:23.340 --> 00:19:27.380 align:middle line:90% bisexual dandy and aesthete." 00:19:27.380 --> 00:19:29.570 align:middle line:84% "Pack your bags for nowhere at all." 00:19:29.570 --> 00:19:33.830 align:middle line:84% Before I read it, I should also add that these creatures-- 00:19:33.830 --> 00:19:36.330 align:middle line:84% Álvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reyes, 00:19:36.330 --> 00:19:38.360 align:middle line:84% and so on-- as they left Pessoa behind, 00:19:38.360 --> 00:19:41.330 align:middle line:84% started writing vast correspondence among 00:19:41.330 --> 00:19:46.790 align:middle line:84% themselves, often with critical opinions about each other, 00:19:46.790 --> 00:19:50.690 align:middle line:84% but also about this creature Fernando Pessoa, if, in fact, 00:19:50.690 --> 00:19:54.090 align:middle line:84% as they posited, he did or did not exist. 00:19:54.090 --> 00:20:05.310 align:middle line:84% So it's a world almost of the kind of solitary nut job, 00:20:05.310 --> 00:20:07.550 align:middle line:90% in a certain way. 00:20:07.550 --> 00:20:12.960 align:middle line:84% Fernando Pessoa lived a somewhat solitary life in Lisbon, 00:20:12.960 --> 00:20:15.150 align:middle line:84% and who ended up by throwing everything 00:20:15.150 --> 00:20:20.160 align:middle line:84% he had written into a trunk that it's still taking them 00:20:20.160 --> 00:20:24.900 align:middle line:84% years and years to try to peel apart and construct 00:20:24.900 --> 00:20:29.620 align:middle line:90% a collected works out of. 00:20:29.620 --> 00:20:31.570 align:middle line:84% Seemed to be two or three steps away 00:20:31.570 --> 00:20:38.200 align:middle line:84% from a kind of actual psychosis, an actual living 00:20:38.200 --> 00:20:43.030 align:middle line:84% outside of the psyche and of the class of [INAUDIBLE] artist. 00:20:43.030 --> 00:20:45.860 align:middle line:90% 00:20:45.860 --> 00:20:48.740 align:middle line:90% This is Álvaro de Campos. 00:20:48.740 --> 00:20:51.020 align:middle line:84% "Pack your bags for nowhere at all. 00:20:51.020 --> 00:20:54.590 align:middle line:84% Set sail for the ubiquitous negation of everything with 00:20:54.590 --> 00:20:57.470 align:middle line:84% a panoply of flags on make-believe ships-- 00:20:57.470 --> 00:21:00.650 align:middle line:84% those miniature, multicolored ships from childhood. 00:21:00.650 --> 00:21:03.080 align:middle line:84% Pack your bags for the grand departure. 00:21:03.080 --> 00:21:05.960 align:middle line:84% And don't forget, along with your brushes and clippers, 00:21:05.960 --> 00:21:09.110 align:middle line:84% the polychrome distance of what can't be had. 00:21:09.110 --> 00:21:11.270 align:middle line:90% Pack your bags once and for all. 00:21:11.270 --> 00:21:15.920 align:middle line:84% Who are you here, where you socially and uselessly exist, 00:21:15.920 --> 00:21:19.250 align:middle line:84% and the more usefully the more uselessly? 00:21:19.250 --> 00:21:21.950 align:middle line:90% The more truly the more falsely? 00:21:21.950 --> 00:21:23.210 align:middle line:90% Who are you here? 00:21:23.210 --> 00:21:24.650 align:middle line:90% Who are you here? 00:21:24.650 --> 00:21:26.210 align:middle line:90% Who are you here? 00:21:26.210 --> 00:21:31.160 align:middle line:84% Set sail even without bags for your own diverse self. 00:21:31.160 --> 00:21:36.230 align:middle line:84% What does the inhabited world have to do with you?" 00:21:36.230 --> 00:21:38.480 align:middle line:84% The answer to the poem's final question 00:21:38.480 --> 00:21:41.510 align:middle line:90% is, of course, everything. 00:21:41.510 --> 00:21:49.370 align:middle line:84% There's a poem-- hope I put a thing here-- 00:21:49.370 --> 00:21:53.420 align:middle line:84% by the actual nonexistent Fernando Pessoa. 00:21:53.420 --> 00:22:22.044 align:middle line:90% 00:22:22.044 --> 00:22:22.810 align:middle line:90% Here it is. 00:22:22.810 --> 00:22:26.626 align:middle line:90% 00:22:26.626 --> 00:22:28.070 align:middle line:90% I'll read two of them here. 00:22:28.070 --> 00:22:31.160 align:middle line:84% This one is called "I'm sorry I don't respond." 00:22:31.160 --> 00:22:33.890 align:middle line:84% "I'm sorry I don't respond, but it isn't, after all, 00:22:33.890 --> 00:22:38.270 align:middle line:84% my fault that I don't correspond to the other you loved in me. 00:22:38.270 --> 00:22:40.220 align:middle line:90% Each of us is many persons. 00:22:40.220 --> 00:22:44.430 align:middle line:84% To me, I'm who I think I am, but others see me differently 00:22:44.430 --> 00:22:46.400 align:middle line:90% and are equally mistaken. 00:22:46.400 --> 00:22:48.440 align:middle line:84% Don't dream me into someone else, 00:22:48.440 --> 00:22:50.840 align:middle line:90% but leave me alone in peace. 00:22:50.840 --> 00:22:53.630 align:middle line:84% If I don't want to find myself, should I want others to 00:22:53.630 --> 00:22:55.910 align:middle line:90% find me?" 00:22:55.910 --> 00:22:59.660 align:middle line:84% He had a number of really pathetically abbreviated, 00:22:59.660 --> 00:23:01.070 align:middle line:90% almost, love affairs. 00:23:01.070 --> 00:23:04.550 align:middle line:84% I think he kissed a woman once or twice. 00:23:04.550 --> 00:23:06.710 align:middle line:84% And they would draw these things out 00:23:06.710 --> 00:23:09.290 align:middle line:84% into meetings in a cafe over periods of time 00:23:09.290 --> 00:23:12.650 align:middle line:84% and eventually, in a sort of Kafka-like fashion, 00:23:12.650 --> 00:23:14.900 align:middle line:84% Pessoa would always confess that he 00:23:14.900 --> 00:23:18.050 align:middle line:84% was afraid that he had too much company 00:23:18.050 --> 00:23:22.280 align:middle line:84% as it was going on in his room, and that he 00:23:22.280 --> 00:23:25.250 align:middle line:84% couldn't carry on this affair with a living person. 00:23:25.250 --> 00:23:27.800 align:middle line:90% 00:23:27.800 --> 00:23:32.450 align:middle line:84% This is one called "Autopsychography." 00:23:32.450 --> 00:23:36.155 align:middle line:84% "The poet is a faker who's so good at his act, 00:23:36.155 --> 00:23:41.210 align:middle line:84% he even fakes the pain of pain he feels in fact. 00:23:41.210 --> 00:23:44.720 align:middle line:84% And those who read his words will feel in what he wrote 00:23:44.720 --> 00:23:49.260 align:middle line:84% neither of the pains he has, but just the one they don't. 00:23:49.260 --> 00:23:51.140 align:middle line:84% And so around its track this thing 00:23:51.140 --> 00:23:54.380 align:middle line:84% called the heart winds, a little clockwork train 00:23:54.380 --> 00:23:58.240 align:middle line:90% to entertain our minds." 00:23:58.240 --> 00:23:59.990 align:middle line:84% But what's interesting about it and what's 00:23:59.990 --> 00:24:04.760 align:middle line:84% poignant about it, of course, is that Pessoa deconstructs 00:24:04.760 --> 00:24:12.800 align:middle line:84% that particular romantic self that Wordsworth, among others, 00:24:12.800 --> 00:24:16.130 align:middle line:84% works particularly hard to construct, 00:24:16.130 --> 00:24:21.170 align:middle line:84% the self of a new integrated consciousness, 00:24:21.170 --> 00:24:24.980 align:middle line:84% takes it apart as one among many poetic fictions. 00:24:24.980 --> 00:24:31.140 align:middle line:84% And yet, the final irony is that he believes so deeply 00:24:31.140 --> 00:24:36.390 align:middle line:84% in these creatures who are projected out of it, much more 00:24:36.390 --> 00:24:40.320 align:middle line:84% deeply than in Pessoa himself, that a kind 00:24:40.320 --> 00:24:45.390 align:middle line:84% of poignant authenticity is reinstated 00:24:45.390 --> 00:24:48.240 align:middle line:84% as these creatures begin to echo back and forth 00:24:48.240 --> 00:24:50.790 align:middle line:90% and talk to one another. 00:24:50.790 --> 00:24:57.600 align:middle line:84% As Álvaro de Campos sends a poem to [INAUDIBLE] itself. 00:24:57.600 --> 00:25:02.280 align:middle line:84% And in the midst of this irony, irony kind 00:25:02.280 --> 00:25:07.740 align:middle line:84% of disappears and something else appears in its place 00:25:07.740 --> 00:25:10.830 align:middle line:90% that's not post-modern at all. 00:25:10.830 --> 00:25:18.050 align:middle line:90% 00:25:18.050 --> 00:25:19.460 align:middle line:90% Oh, hell. 00:25:19.460 --> 00:25:21.965 align:middle line:90% I'm just getting started. 00:25:21.965 --> 00:25:26.340 align:middle line:84% I'm turning into Fidel Castro here. 00:25:26.340 --> 00:25:31.070 align:middle line:84% Well, we're supposed to go to 5 o'clock. 00:25:31.070 --> 00:25:32.570 align:middle line:84% Let me outline -- can't be helped -- 00:25:32.570 --> 00:25:37.590 align:middle line:90% 00:25:37.590 --> 00:25:39.530 align:middle line:84% Does the library closes at 5:00 PM? 00:25:39.530 --> 00:25:40.988 align:middle line:90% I don't think it does. 00:25:40.988 --> 00:25:41.946 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:25:41.946 --> 00:25:42.446 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:25:42.446 --> 00:25:43.420 align:middle line:90% We can always [INAUDIBLE]. 00:25:43.420 --> 00:25:44.750 align:middle line:84% Because we're all still hanging in here. 00:25:44.750 --> 00:25:46.500 align:middle line:84% OK, well, we can go a little further then. 00:25:46.500 --> 00:25:50.890 align:middle line:90% I don't want to oppress people. 00:25:50.890 --> 00:25:54.253 align:middle line:84% Another odd juxtaposition I was interested in making along 00:25:54.253 --> 00:25:55.670 align:middle line:84% with, I realize, a couple of hours 00:25:55.670 --> 00:25:58.220 align:middle line:84% of notes on my own collaborations with poets 00:25:58.220 --> 00:26:02.630 align:middle line:84% and painters is an interesting thing 00:26:02.630 --> 00:26:06.840 align:middle line:84% I've been thinking about recently. 00:26:06.840 --> 00:26:10.070 align:middle line:84% Which, of course, is I don't know how many of you may be 00:26:10.070 --> 00:26:13.100 align:middle line:84% familiar with the work of Edmond Jabés, 00:26:13.100 --> 00:26:16.910 align:middle line:84% the great post-Holocaust writer born in Egypt. 00:26:16.910 --> 00:26:19.730 align:middle line:90% 00:26:19.730 --> 00:26:24.290 align:middle line:84% As Nasser began to expel the Jews from Egypt after the Suez 00:26:24.290 --> 00:26:30.950 align:middle line:84% Crisis, he ended up living through a complex series 00:26:30.950 --> 00:26:32.435 align:middle line:90% of events in France. 00:26:32.435 --> 00:26:35.450 align:middle line:90% 00:26:35.450 --> 00:26:40.860 align:middle line:84% The day after he arrived in France, in Paris, 00:26:40.860 --> 00:26:45.860 align:middle line:84% there's an extraordinary turn in his life. 00:26:45.860 --> 00:26:48.290 align:middle line:84% Edmond and his wife, Arlette Jabés, 00:26:48.290 --> 00:26:53.090 align:middle line:84% both came from the highest Egyptian Jewish society. 00:26:53.090 --> 00:26:54.590 align:middle line:90% He was from a banking family. 00:26:54.590 --> 00:26:59.480 align:middle line:84% Arlette was a princess going back hundreds of years. 00:26:59.480 --> 00:27:02.000 align:middle line:90% She lived in a palace. 00:27:02.000 --> 00:27:04.850 align:middle line:84% She once told me, you know, if Edmond and I had not 00:27:04.850 --> 00:27:06.740 align:middle line:84% been exiled from Egypt, I'd just be 00:27:06.740 --> 00:27:10.580 align:middle line:90% still out there playing golf. 00:27:10.580 --> 00:27:17.900 align:middle line:84% Anyway, they arrived in Paris in what was it, 1957 or something 00:27:17.900 --> 00:27:21.680 align:middle line:84% like that, and the day they arrived, 00:27:21.680 --> 00:27:28.010 align:middle line:84% Edmond went out for a walk, and he saw a graffiti on a wall-- 00:27:28.010 --> 00:27:30.200 align:middle line:84% Paris is the home of graffiti, but this was not 00:27:30.200 --> 00:27:31.820 align:middle line:90% a very good one-- 00:27:31.820 --> 00:27:34.940 align:middle line:90% which said "Jews go home." 00:27:34.940 --> 00:27:37.880 align:middle line:90% And it said it in English. 00:27:37.880 --> 00:27:41.300 align:middle line:84% And so he said, "What a strange world this is. 00:27:41.300 --> 00:27:45.830 align:middle line:84% I just left home, and now it's telling me to go home, 00:27:45.830 --> 00:27:49.670 align:middle line:90% and what home would that be?" 00:27:49.670 --> 00:27:52.760 align:middle line:84% And besides which, it's not even in French, it's in English. 00:27:52.760 --> 00:27:55.850 align:middle line:84% Why is it in English on this wall in Paris? 00:27:55.850 --> 00:28:01.010 align:middle line:84% So Jabes realized that the only home of maybe the Jew, 00:28:01.010 --> 00:28:04.820 align:middle line:84% the wandering Jew, the exilic Jew, the diasporic Jew, 00:28:04.820 --> 00:28:07.190 align:middle line:90% was the book. 00:28:07.190 --> 00:28:09.260 align:middle line:84% It was the only place where he existed, 00:28:09.260 --> 00:28:12.230 align:middle line:84% and he thought perhaps the only place where poets exist, 00:28:12.230 --> 00:28:16.700 align:middle line:84% or in Fernando Pessoa's case, cease to exist. 00:28:16.700 --> 00:28:22.040 align:middle line:84% And he began to write, I don't know what you would call it, 00:28:22.040 --> 00:28:25.880 align:middle line:84% an allegory of the Holocaust called "The Book of Questions." 00:28:25.880 --> 00:28:27.470 align:middle line:84% He would write this as he commuted 00:28:27.470 --> 00:28:29.510 align:middle line:84% to his work on scraps of paper that he 00:28:29.510 --> 00:28:35.690 align:middle line:84% would put in his pockets, and write throughout the day 00:28:35.690 --> 00:28:38.020 align:middle line:84% as he tried to pretend he was a man who could actually 00:28:38.020 --> 00:28:39.650 align:middle line:90% earn a living. 00:28:39.650 --> 00:28:42.650 align:middle line:84% But he was not good at that at all. 00:28:42.650 --> 00:28:48.020 align:middle line:84% But kind people took him on in jobs, like film [INAUDIBLE] 00:28:48.020 --> 00:28:49.130 align:middle line:90% and stuff like that. 00:28:49.130 --> 00:28:51.735 align:middle line:84% And one person had him work in an art gallery. 00:28:51.735 --> 00:28:54.110 align:middle line:84% He worked there for 18 months and didn't sell a painting. 00:28:54.110 --> 00:28:56.236 align:middle line:84% And he told the guy, "You have to fire me." 00:28:56.236 --> 00:28:57.990 align:middle line:84% And the guy said, "I won't fire you." 00:28:57.990 --> 00:29:00.830 align:middle line:84% And Edmond says, "I have to quit because I've never 00:29:00.830 --> 00:29:02.810 align:middle line:90% sold a painting." 00:29:02.810 --> 00:29:07.460 align:middle line:84% Anyway, he would get home at night and Arlette, 00:29:07.460 --> 00:29:10.220 align:middle line:84% his wife, in the days when wives did such things, 00:29:10.220 --> 00:29:13.760 align:middle line:84% would type up the notes into the pages of this book. 00:29:13.760 --> 00:29:19.970 align:middle line:90% 00:29:19.970 --> 00:29:24.980 align:middle line:84% And he created this extraordinary theater 00:29:24.980 --> 00:29:25.760 align:middle line:90% of voices-- 00:29:25.760 --> 00:29:32.360 align:middle line:84% imaginary rabbis, scraps of poetry, 00:29:32.360 --> 00:29:37.430 align:middle line:84% all sorts of different forms, dialogues among people, 00:29:37.430 --> 00:29:39.110 align:middle line:90% read through a prose narrative. 00:29:39.110 --> 00:29:42.320 align:middle line:90% 00:29:42.320 --> 00:29:44.180 align:middle line:84% At the heart of "The Book of Questions" 00:29:44.180 --> 00:29:49.100 align:middle line:84% is a Holocaust tale of Sarah and Yukel, 00:29:49.100 --> 00:29:52.610 align:middle line:90% two Jewish lovers who die. 00:29:52.610 --> 00:29:55.190 align:middle line:84% But it's a tale that's left untold. 00:29:55.190 --> 00:29:58.370 align:middle line:84% It's told at the margins because Jabes, 00:29:58.370 --> 00:30:02.750 align:middle line:84% like many post-Holocaust writers such as Paul Celan and others, 00:30:02.750 --> 00:30:08.270 align:middle line:84% had to deal with the fact of unrepresentability. 00:30:08.270 --> 00:30:12.140 align:middle line:84% That the annihilation of 8 million people in the camps 00:30:12.140 --> 00:30:17.270 align:middle line:84% was something that was unspeakable and untellable, 00:30:17.270 --> 00:30:19.970 align:middle line:90% at least to their minds. 00:30:19.970 --> 00:30:24.590 align:middle line:84% And so he created this extraordinary book 00:30:24.590 --> 00:30:27.230 align:middle line:84% that ended up going book after book after book, 00:30:27.230 --> 00:30:29.270 align:middle line:90% so it was in seven books in all. 00:30:29.270 --> 00:30:33.080 align:middle line:84% This is the first three volumes translated very beautifully 00:30:33.080 --> 00:30:36.140 align:middle line:84% by the poet, the prose writer, Rosmarie Waldrop. 00:30:36.140 --> 00:30:38.810 align:middle line:84% And Rosmarie dedicated a good part of her life 00:30:38.810 --> 00:30:42.650 align:middle line:90% to translating Edmond's work. 00:30:42.650 --> 00:30:48.706 align:middle line:84% And she arrived, in fact, in Paris in 19-- 00:30:48.706 --> 00:30:49.632 align:middle line:90% oh, hell. 00:30:49.632 --> 00:30:50.558 align:middle line:90% When was it? 00:30:50.558 --> 00:30:53.336 align:middle line:90% 00:30:53.336 --> 00:30:56.240 align:middle line:90% It was in the '70s I guess. 00:30:56.240 --> 00:31:02.730 align:middle line:84% And went to a party with George Tisch, 00:31:02.730 --> 00:31:06.300 align:middle line:84% who now lives in Detroit, in his apartment in Paris. 00:31:06.300 --> 00:31:08.960 align:middle line:90% And there she met-- 00:31:08.960 --> 00:31:11.540 align:middle line:84% it was around 12:30 or 1:00 in the morning-- 00:31:11.540 --> 00:31:16.460 align:middle line:84% the French poet Claude Royet-Journoud. 00:31:16.460 --> 00:31:21.830 align:middle line:84% And she said to him, "Claude, I have a question to ask you, 00:31:21.830 --> 00:31:27.720 align:middle line:84% which is that I have translated 50 pages of a poet known 00:31:27.720 --> 00:31:35.740 align:middle line:84% in the Americas, a poet and prose writer, Edmond Jabes, 00:31:35.740 --> 00:31:39.400 align:middle line:90% but I don't know where he lives. 00:31:39.400 --> 00:31:43.750 align:middle line:84% I have no credential as a poet or a translator 00:31:43.750 --> 00:31:45.650 align:middle line:90% to approach him." 00:31:45.650 --> 00:31:48.920 align:middle line:84% Rosmarie had not published much work at that point. 00:31:48.920 --> 00:31:50.920 align:middle line:84% And Claude turned to her and said, "Well, that's 00:31:50.920 --> 00:31:52.550 align:middle line:90% very simple. 00:31:52.550 --> 00:31:53.590 align:middle line:90% We will call him up." 00:31:53.590 --> 00:31:56.500 align:middle line:84% So she called up Edmond on the phone, 1 o'clock in the morning 00:31:56.500 --> 00:31:59.500 align:middle line:84% he called her up, and that was the launching of this project. 00:31:59.500 --> 00:32:01.990 align:middle line:84% They met the next day and Jabes realized 00:32:01.990 --> 00:32:03.250 align:middle line:90% that she was impeccable. 00:32:03.250 --> 00:32:06.550 align:middle line:84% And therefore, because of this chance meeting, 00:32:06.550 --> 00:32:09.730 align:middle line:84% we have known about Rosmarie, crazy enough 00:32:09.730 --> 00:32:11.860 align:middle line:90% to translate these books. 00:32:11.860 --> 00:32:15.820 align:middle line:84% And then she spent years finding a publisher. 00:32:15.820 --> 00:32:19.000 align:middle line:84% With much hesitation, Wesleyan published them. 00:32:19.000 --> 00:32:21.490 align:middle line:84% And then they kept wanting not to publish any more of them. 00:32:21.490 --> 00:32:25.700 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] And now, of course, it's 00:32:25.700 --> 00:32:29.330 align:middle line:84% one of the shining stars of their back list, what they say. 00:32:29.330 --> 00:32:33.990 align:middle line:84% In any case, a theater of voices that exemplifies, for me, 00:32:33.990 --> 00:32:40.590 align:middle line:84% an address to the social crisis of the catastrophes 00:32:40.590 --> 00:32:43.260 align:middle line:90% of the century. 00:32:43.260 --> 00:32:47.430 align:middle line:84% An interesting, wild parallel to that, for me, 00:32:47.430 --> 00:32:52.350 align:middle line:84% is the accumulation of books of Susan Howe. 00:32:52.350 --> 00:32:55.080 align:middle line:84% And I'm thinking of all of her work together. 00:32:55.080 --> 00:33:01.470 align:middle line:84% Both Jabes and Susan Howe deal with, I'm thinking, 00:33:01.470 --> 00:33:04.320 align:middle line:84% things like articulations of [INAUDIBLE] in time but also, 00:33:04.320 --> 00:33:07.470 align:middle line:84% more recent books of hers, including "Pierce-arrow" 00:33:07.470 --> 00:33:13.410 align:middle line:84% and others, deal with disappeared voices. 00:33:13.410 --> 00:33:17.160 align:middle line:84% In the case of Jabes, of course, of the 00:33:17.160 --> 00:33:22.320 align:middle line:84% disappeared Jews and others in accounts. 00:33:22.320 --> 00:33:25.470 align:middle line:84% In Susan's case, the erasure of women's 00:33:25.470 --> 00:33:27.960 align:middle line:84% voices from earlier American history, 00:33:27.960 --> 00:33:30.540 align:middle line:84% but also the marginalizing of certain forms 00:33:30.540 --> 00:33:32.550 align:middle line:90% of poetic textuality. 00:33:32.550 --> 00:33:35.040 align:middle line:84% She's written on Emily Dickinson, where 00:33:35.040 --> 00:33:38.850 align:middle line:84% she talks very eloquently of the destruction of Emily 00:33:38.850 --> 00:33:45.600 align:middle line:84% Dickinson's texts by scholarly normalization. 00:33:45.600 --> 00:33:48.930 align:middle line:84% They both talk about the voices that exist 00:33:48.930 --> 00:33:50.580 align:middle line:90% at the margins of the page. 00:33:50.580 --> 00:33:55.500 align:middle line:84% They both mix in an impossible, pidginizing way, 00:33:55.500 --> 00:33:59.400 align:middle line:90% perhaps, to get back to Cesaire. 00:33:59.400 --> 00:34:01.650 align:middle line:84% All the different genres so that their books 00:34:01.650 --> 00:34:03.690 align:middle line:90% are radically undefinable. 00:34:03.690 --> 00:34:09.374 align:middle line:84% We find a kind of poetic impulse at the heart of it. 00:34:09.374 --> 00:34:10.739 align:middle line:90% It's unquestionably that. 00:34:10.739 --> 00:34:13.320 align:middle line:84% It's unquestionably the mechanisms 00:34:13.320 --> 00:34:16.889 align:middle line:84% of poetry rather than, say, conventional narrative, that 00:34:16.889 --> 00:34:21.750 align:middle line:84% give them the means to create these extraordinary structures 00:34:21.750 --> 00:34:26.340 align:middle line:84% where what is silenced can be represented. 00:34:26.340 --> 00:34:29.655 align:middle line:90% 00:34:29.655 --> 00:34:33.330 align:middle line:84% In Susan's case, often what is erased 00:34:33.330 --> 00:34:37.510 align:middle line:84% is left to erase so that you have illegible texts in places. 00:34:37.510 --> 00:34:40.980 align:middle line:84% So the reader has to begin to read a crossed out text that 00:34:40.980 --> 00:34:42.130 align:middle line:90% cannot be read. 00:34:42.130 --> 00:34:43.290 align:middle line:90% So how do you read it? 00:34:43.290 --> 00:34:47.750 align:middle line:84% You read the meaning of illegibility 00:34:47.750 --> 00:34:52.469 align:middle line:84% and you read the meaning of historical erasure. 00:34:52.469 --> 00:34:55.320 align:middle line:84% In any case, it struck me as I was 00:34:55.320 --> 00:34:58.710 align:middle line:84% getting ready to talk about these things, the persons 00:34:58.710 --> 00:35:03.390 align:middle line:84% of the poem, that in fact, these two sets of work 00:35:03.390 --> 00:35:05.460 align:middle line:90% by such vastly different poets-- 00:35:05.460 --> 00:35:11.880 align:middle line:84% I mean, Edmond, an Egyptian Jew, Susan Howe, 00:35:11.880 --> 00:35:17.580 align:middle line:84% a mixture of old American WASP culture. 00:35:17.580 --> 00:35:19.800 align:middle line:84% The Howes being a family that goes way back 00:35:19.800 --> 00:35:24.246 align:middle line:84% in American history, classic king, New England 00:35:24.246 --> 00:35:27.180 align:middle line:84% literary culture and a crazy Irish mother 00:35:27.180 --> 00:35:30.860 align:middle line:84% from the Irish theater who's a lover of Samuel Beckett-- 00:35:30.860 --> 00:35:33.774 align:middle line:90% 00:35:33.774 --> 00:35:39.210 align:middle line:84% an impeccable credential, it seems to me. 00:35:39.210 --> 00:35:42.240 align:middle line:84% In any case, from these vastly different backgrounds 00:35:42.240 --> 00:35:47.790 align:middle line:84% at a certain moment in time that's pretty contemporaneous. 00:35:47.790 --> 00:35:50.310 align:middle line:90% 00:35:50.310 --> 00:35:54.150 align:middle line:84% And Susan certainly started working without any knowledge 00:35:54.150 --> 00:35:56.580 align:middle line:90% of what Edmond Jabes was doing. 00:35:56.580 --> 00:36:02.040 align:middle line:84% They created sort of exemplary texts of the impossible, where 00:36:02.040 --> 00:36:05.738 align:middle line:84% there is a central passion and an identifiable author 00:36:05.738 --> 00:36:08.030 align:middle line:84% in the sense that no one else could have written either 00:36:08.030 --> 00:36:09.230 align:middle line:90% of these works. 00:36:09.230 --> 00:36:11.310 align:middle line:84% And yet, it's all a matter of voice. 00:36:11.310 --> 00:36:18.320 align:middle line:84% It's all a matter of a decentered echo chamber 00:36:18.320 --> 00:36:23.990 align:middle line:84% effect or a labyrinth, whatever metaphor you would like to use. 00:36:23.990 --> 00:36:27.820 align:middle line:84% That's about a third of the way, but I can stop there.