A Jumble

citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Tue, 23 Nov 1999 15:15:21 -0800

1.  Perhaps relevant to The Great Debate re upper/lower case, etc.:

"I'm aware that a good many perfectly intelligent people can't stand
parenthetical comments while a story's purportedly being told.  (We're
advised of these things by mail--mostly, granted, by thesis preparers with
very natural, oaty urges to write us under the table in their off-campus
time.  But we read, and usually we believe; good, bad, or indifferent, any
string of English words holds our attention as if it came from Prospero
himself.)"

--Seymour: an Introduction


2.  Re "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes":

For those hopelessly lost to Rilke, I recommend Joseph Brodsky's
line-by-line, word-by-word, almost syllable-by-syllable reading of Rilke's
first great poem, to be found in Brodsky's collection of essays titled  _On
Grief and Reason_, Farrar, Straus, 1995.  (Further afield, one might invoke
Brodsky's similarly brilliant reading of Marina Tsvetaeva's "Novogodnee",
her letter/poem to Rilke, in Brodsky's other collection of essays titled
_Less Than One_, Farrar, Straus, 1986.  ("Novogodnee" is her response upon
learning of Rilke's death and his poem "Elegy" which he wrote and dedicated
to her  { I believe a translation of "Elegy" is available in _The Selected
Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke_, translated by Stephen Mitchell, pub. Random
House, 1982; most of "Novogodnee is available within the Brodsky essay
itself}).


3.  Re Balthus:

For those who might have encountered Balthus in _The New Yorker_ issue of
September 6, 1999 and noticed, along with the author Nicolas Weber,  the
framed photo of the young Balthus posed with his mother and her lover, the
poet Rainer Maria Rilke, the same photo (or similar one) appears in
_Balthus_, Sabine Rewald, MMA/Abrams, 1984, on p. 14.  The Rilke preface for
"Mitsou" mentioned by Weber is available in _Ahead of All Parting: The
Selected Poetry and Prose of RMR_, (enlarged) translation by Stephen
Mitchell, Modern Library edition, 1995.


4.  Re being read to in bed:

I thoroughly enjoyed the recent posts on this subject.


--Bruce