tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.comments2024-03-18T16:55:31.971+00:00This SpaceStephen Mitchelmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comBlogger2285125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-89073319625971904772024-03-18T14:56:19.067+00:002024-03-18T14:56:19.067+00:00https://graywyvern.substack.com/p/the-impossiblehttps://graywyvern.substack.com/p/the-impossiblemichaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00975839075714035618noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-66746843001972211992023-12-28T19:23:20.411+00:002023-12-28T19:23:20.411+00:00Thanks Scott. 'Humility' is not a word one...Thanks Scott. 'Humility' is not a word one associates with Frank, but it's there for sure. (Steve, unable to sign in for some reason)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-15182494215526183882023-12-28T19:01:49.555+00:002023-12-28T19:01:49.555+00:00"We can look too closely at life. Careful un-..."We can look too closely at life. Careful un-close looking as much full immersion as I can stand anymore. . . .[the question is] how tactically and artfully we cross the landscape ahead, once the next to last barrier is exceeded" (Be Mine). There is a profound humility in Frank Bascombe that moves me, rings true to me, gives me hope and reason in my uncertainties. Many thanks for giving me new perspectives on books I love dearlyScott Abbottnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-49099217412910886102023-12-05T14:14:41.311+00:002023-12-05T14:14:41.311+00:00He's a force of nature because of the films he...He's a force of nature because of the films he makes...a vast, uneven, quirky, hilarious, unsettling oevre. And at the heart of it is, as you say, an enigma ... named Kaspar Hauser. When I think of Herzog I think of Hauser.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-87896256407216473522023-08-07T16:11:24.570+01:002023-08-07T16:11:24.570+01:00Thanks Gary. Apologies for the delay in posting yo...Thanks Gary. Apologies for the delay in posting your comment. I didn't get the moderating email. I'll see if I can find Griselda Pollock's essay. SteveAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-41096596198068430162023-08-01T15:46:23.183+01:002023-08-01T15:46:23.183+01:00Stephen, thanks for the post which I have found ve...Stephen, thanks for the post which I have found very helpful in my further understanding of Kofman. I too have come to Smothered Words late, in my case through Griselda Pollock and her essay in the Palgrave Macmillan text Representing Auschwitz: 'Art as a Transport Station of Trauma' which I recommend. Whilst the former reply is interesting I can appreciate how it would read a tad heavy handed. Thats academics for you!Garyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01700073847745334166noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-45262951758705944092023-06-27T15:49:52.604+01:002023-06-27T15:49:52.604+01:00Yes, it's me, forced into anonymity by Google ...Yes, it's me, forced into anonymity by Google for some reason. And her point about first and last nouns is indeed insightful. As are your thoughts here. I didn't think the comment would post, and then lost it, I thought, so I rewrote it while cursing and will past that to your facebook postAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-73991689018636507962023-06-27T15:43:23.651+01:002023-06-27T15:43:23.651+01:00Thanks Scott (I presume it's you). I realise t...Thanks Scott (I presume it's you). I realise the first word in the German is Der, but presumably Karolina Watroba meant the first noun (because she says she hasn't checked the English translation), and anyway it's 'Death' in both cases in English.Stephen Mitchelmorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-82206763993901434552023-06-27T15:28:24.169+01:002023-06-27T15:28:24.169+01:00I trace my decision to study German literature as ...I trace my decision to study German literature as a profession to an essay by Oskar Seidlin: "Stiluntersuching an einem Thomann Satz" ... a brilliant look at a single sentence at the beginning of the the second part of "Death in Venice." Style, form as meaning in a sentence that stretches 16 lines in the edition Seidlin was reading (and also in the DDR collected works edition I have). Your thoughts here prompt me to open volume 9 of my edition (short works making up more than 1000 pages) and reenter a story I once wrote an MA thesis on (Plato's "Phaedrus" as theme and source). The first word of the title is not "death" but "Der." The first sentence of "The Death in Venice" announces that Gustav Aschenbach, or Gustav von Aschenbach as his name has been officially since his fiftieth birthday...and I think: I know this work intimately; and I never noticed that reference to Goethe's "Man of Fifty Years" in which the man in question begins to alter his appearance in response to his aging, learning to apply cosmetics. I read the Goethe work much later than the Mann one and bring much to Mann's story I couldn't have then. Your thought on wishing to go beyond the end, an end that will be death, both of the author and of the work that has grown increasingly meagre over Aschenbach's life, shorter and shorter works that approach perfection and nothingness, emphasizes the fact that this is a work about form.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-35393246216947613702023-05-20T19:57:56.537+01:002023-05-20T19:57:56.537+01:00He is a remarkable critic. Page 95 from the same b...He is a remarkable critic. Page 95 from the same book, an idea that led me to other important ideas as I read Rilke and thought of the standing metaphor that permeates the Duino Elegies: Rilke’s work, according to Geoffrey Hartman, involves the creation of “a new idiom which would neglect the anthropomorphic for the physical basis of language. The commonplace sense of words is neglected for their seeming origin as signs signifying weight, direction, and invisibly-oriented gesture."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-10612242380938014802023-05-19T12:40:48.031+01:002023-05-19T12:40:48.031+01:00I think you are right - that is the literary criti...I think you are right - that is the literary criticism of our time. Seems as if literature is stymied by the cultural, economical, technological, and the political tenor of the times. I sense that things have splintered so that "enablement" and "impending-ness" are lost, overgrown, buried, blurred. I think literature will find a way thru - that humanity will forge a way for literature to find a way thru, but I see it happening neither much currently nor soon. But I think as people like you continue to search, to push for it, to criticize the prevailing surrender, hope for movement survives. I am always reminded of Faulkner's Nobel Prize Banquet Speech (https://tinyurl.com/wy69z7k5), but it grows increasingly pointed as time goes on. Kurthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12605263881837566901noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-2596251514518756462023-03-09T14:14:43.796+00:002023-03-09T14:14:43.796+00:00Many thanks Kurt. I'll go on.Many thanks Kurt. I'll go on.Stephen Mitchelmorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-43489131512290186952023-03-09T14:06:21.012+00:002023-03-09T14:06:21.012+00:00Just a quick note to tell you how much I’ve enjoye...Just a quick note to tell you how much I’ve enjoyed reading this. I so appreciate the Jeff Fort piece - Downward Displacements. It has sucked me into The Imperative to Write with a whole new appreciation and approach that has made the reading so rich. "The book from the sky" is such a refreshing encouragement to reading. Thank you too for all your considerations of Maurice Blanchot. You've opened, as you so skillfully and enticingly always do, new reading pathways for me. Please carry on!Kurthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12605263881837566901noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-80321002767405618162022-10-23T00:55:21.307+01:002022-10-23T00:55:21.307+01:00It's not often that we witness a decline that ...It's not often that we witness a decline that is both long and precipitous but McEwan has pulled (is pulling) it off.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-45878314432818961942022-10-08T20:45:43.355+01:002022-10-08T20:45:43.355+01:00Frisch is a wonderful translator, and Stach is bot...Frisch is a wonderful translator, and Stach is both a native speaker of German and a leading Kafka authority. But his understanding of Einpfählen in the second aphorism is too much of a stretch. Even though Kafka is not known for gardening, he may well have staked a tomato plant or two in his time—but probably not while writing his aphorisms in Zürau from September 1917 to April 1918. It was the wrong time of year. <br />The Grimms’ Deutsches Wörterbuch glosses einpfählen as meaning only “to fence something in” and offers an example (though only one) to that effect from Fichte. So Kaiser and Wilkins probably nailed it: “All human errors are impatience, the premature breaking off of what is methodical, an apparent fencing in of the apparent thing.”<br />On the other hand, in translating scheinbar as apparent, they do not (and maybe cannot) register the difference in German between scheinbar and anscheinend. I think the “apparent fencing in of the apparent thing” is not exactly right. The German scheinbar means seeming, in the sense of ostensibly: it seems so but in fact it is otherwise. The German anscheinend means apparent in the sense of: that’s how it looks we must suppose that’s how it is. Admittedly, it would hard to make all that clear in English as pithy as Kafka’s German. The difference between seem and appear in English is not so pronounced as the German distinction between scheinbar and anscheinend.<br />Think of how the first paragraph of the The Castle ends, with K. standing on the wooden bridge gazing up into the scheinbare Leere, the “seeming void.” To call it the “apparent void” would not ring true. The void seems empty, but we know that scheinbar means it will turn out otherwise. So it is also in aphorism two: in breaking off our inquiries before the time is ripe, we only seem to have fenced in the seeming object of our efforts. (In Kafka the time will never be ripe).<br />This small difference is worth thinking about because the word scheinbar comes up a lot in Kafka. His world everywhere lacks certainty. Compare, for another example, an aphorism from 1913, “The Trees”: <br />Denn wir sind wie Baumstämme im Schnee. Scheinbar liegen sie glatt auf, und mit kleinem Anstoß sollte man sie wegschieben können. Nein, das kann man nicht, denn sie sind fest mit dem Boden verbunden. Aber sieh, sogar das ist nur scheinbar.<br />For we are like tree trunks in the snow. Seemingly they lie flat, and with a little push you ought to be able to push them away. No, you can't, because they are firmly attached to the ground. But look, even that is mere seeming.<br />So it is also with Josefine’s singing, as you point out at the end of your reflections on the Zürau aphorisms. To decide about the nature of her singing once and for all would be an impatient act, a mistake.<br />Steve Dowdennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-54936019279040859522022-10-08T20:44:30.830+01:002022-10-08T20:44:30.830+01:00Frisch is a wonderful translator, and Stach is bot...Frisch is a wonderful translator, and Stach is both a native speaker of German and a leading Kafka authority. But his understanding of Einpfählen in the second aphorism is too much of a stretch. Even though Kafka is not known for gardening, he may well have staked a tomato plant or two in his time—but probably not while writing his aphorisms in Zürau from September 1917 to April 1918. It was the wrong time of year. <br />The Grimms’ Deutsches Wörterbuch glosses einpfählen as meaning only “to fence something in” and offers an example (though only one) to that effect from Fichte. So Kaiser and Wilkins probably nailed it: “All human errors are impatience, the premature breaking off of what is methodical, an apparent fencing in of the apparent thing.”<br />On the other hand, in translating scheinbar as apparent, they do not (and maybe cannot) register the difference in German between scheinbar and anscheinend. I think the “apparent fencing in of the apparent thing” is not exactly right. The German scheinbar means seeming, in the sense of ostensibly: it seems so but in fact it is otherwise. The German anscheinend means apparent in the sense of: that’s how it looks we must suppose that’s how it is. Admittedly, it would hard to make all that clear in English as pithy as Kafka’s German. The difference between seem and appear in English is not so pronounced as the German distinction between scheinbar and anscheinend.<br />Think of how the first paragraph of the The Castle ends, with K. standing on the wooden bridge gazing up into the scheinbare Leere, the “seeming void.” To call it the “apparent void” would not ring true. The void seems empty, but we know that scheinbar means it will turn out otherwise. So it is also in aphorism two: in breaking off our inquiries before the time is ripe, we only seem to have fenced in the seeming object of our efforts. (In Kafka the time will never be ripe).<br />This small difference is worth thinking about because the word scheinbar comes up a lot in Kafka. His world everywhere lacks certainty. Compare, for another example, an aphorism from 1913, “The Trees”: <br />Denn wir sind wie Baumstämme im Schnee. Scheinbar liegen sie glatt auf, und mit kleinem Anstoß sollte man sie wegschieben können. Nein, das kann man nicht, denn sie sind fest mit dem Boden verbunden. Aber sieh, sogar das ist nur scheinbar.<br />For we are like tree trunks in the snow. Seemingly they lie flat, and with a little push you ought to be able to push them away. No, you can't, because they are firmly attached to the ground. But look, even that is mere seeming.<br />So it is also with Josefine’s singing, as you point out at the end of your reflections on the Zürau aphorisms. To decide about the nature of her singing once and for all would be an impatient act, a mistake.<br />Steve Dowdennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-25579387233488532122022-09-20T15:55:52.960+01:002022-09-20T15:55:52.960+01:00Thanks for the post - eager to read it. Glad to ha...Thanks for the post - eager to read it. Glad to have more to read!Kurthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12605263881837566901noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-16301710618455774372022-07-21T16:55:23.044+01:002022-07-21T16:55:23.044+01:00Thanks for the reference to Like Stories of Old ch...Thanks for the reference to Like Stories of Old channel on YouTube - lots of wonderful videos.Kurthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12605263881837566901noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-18045588202491970422022-07-07T16:04:18.345+01:002022-07-07T16:04:18.345+01:00Thanks Kurt. I'm not familiar with Jephcott...Thanks Kurt. I'm not familiar with Jephcott's book but the edition from 1972 looks great in the Amazon photo. I've read The Luminous Novel and admired its remorselessness.Stephen Mitchelmorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-18255534847649000022022-07-07T14:54:07.218+01:002022-07-07T14:54:07.218+01:00Sepastián poses an interesting answer to which I t...Sepastián poses an interesting answer to which I tend to agree. I've just gotten onto Murnane, thanks to Dustin Illingworth and have, in short order, read Border Districts and The Plains, along with several so-called essays. all of which are, I am finding, sticking with me on several levels - mental images, turns of phrase, insights, and challenges. The writing invigorates me and fascinates me in it is hard to get a hold on, it's 'slippery', and enchanting - a la Énard, Magris, and others. <br /><br />On a slightly different track - are you familiar with Jephcott - Proust and Rilke: The Literature of Expanded Consciousness? Lots of fascinating considerations of "...moments when the consciousness seems to expand - when the mind takes in the world with a rare and strange intensity. Such moments ... are the source of the impulse to create a work of art." This is the same Jephcott who was a translator of Benjamin, among other interesting intersections.<br /><br />Love the blog, always thrilled to read the latest which leads me back to fascinating strings from the past. At present, deeply into Murnane and Levrero - The Luminous Novel is sticking with me a lot at the moment. Please keep up the good work you are doing!Kurthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12605263881837566901noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-39546278099666288242022-04-14T15:40:30.199+01:002022-04-14T15:40:30.199+01:00Thanks for the comment Sebastián. I haven't re...Thanks for the comment Sebastián. I haven't read Murnane beyond some of Inland and Barley Patch, so can't respond in any meaningful way.Stephen Mitchelmorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-36849701820238369902022-04-14T14:45:40.947+01:002022-04-14T14:45:40.947+01:00The question in your last paragraph made me think ...The question in your last paragraph made me think of Inland, by Gerald Murnane, and A Million Windows, by the same author. And even if I'm not sure whether I fully understood the question, I think that many of the short "pieces of fiction" collected in his Stream System may also be part of an answer.Sebastiánhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03243374669144555338noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-71471819284764315302021-11-02T18:37:04.937+00:002021-11-02T18:37:04.937+00:00your thoughts strike a chord in me.
a draft chap...your thoughts strike a chord in me. <br /><br />a draft chapter of my book "On Standing," the one on Kafka's "Metamorphosis," ends with what seem like related thoughts:<br /><br />Gregor Samsa, dominated by language maligning a body like his, exists in a text that both features and excoriates that language. The Samsa family speaks and is spoken by a language of oppression. It is, however, also a language that can speak and reveal that oppression.Scott Abbotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01782322856303315648noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-84706538088740900592021-11-01T19:14:21.122+00:002021-11-01T19:14:21.122+00:00Thanks for this and I think you are right on targe...Thanks for this and I think you are right on target.<br />KurtKurthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12605263881837566901noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470094.post-69195406035789131112021-07-25T14:27:39.612+01:002021-07-25T14:27:39.612+01:00Here it is: https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/boo...Here it is: https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/bookworm/aharon-appelfeld<br /><br />I've subscribed to the podcast for many years but don't remember this, so many thanks for mentioning it.Stephen Mitchelmorehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01658772259307446873noreply@blogger.com