Category Archive: Poetry
Lost in Translation
(Thomas Bernhard, 9 February 1931 – 12 February 1989) ‘Lost in Translation‘ is an average film, but an excellent phrase. The Bridge between languages is (to cite another poor film) A Bridge Too Far, where literary translation is concerned. L may be close to mastering Classical Greek but this does not solve the problem of children in England who have to take a test on The Iliad. Whether translation be ‘faithful’ or ‘loose,’ the rules of language suggest that most literary translation will be something else than the original. If you don’t believe me, try reading The Odyssey by Alexander…
Continue Reading →The Bells
(by Edgar Allan Poe, born 19 January 1809) “The Bells,” published after Poe’s premature death, represents the poet both at his best and his worst. His terror is real, his verse prosaic, but the depth for feeling he generates wears you down in the end and you surrender: “Hear the tolling of the bells – Iron bells! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy meaning of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the…
Continue Reading →Xanadu
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (born 21 October 1772) I don’t blame the anonymous person from Porlock who interrupted S.T. at Ash Farm during the composition of Kubla Khan; or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment. (It may have been an opium trip in any case.) But the point is that Coleridge’s ‘fragment’ is perfect and needs no further embellishment. Richard Holmes, in his insanely detailed biography of Coleridge (1989), observed “His myth of creativity contains both these elements, which like Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”, implies both destruction and preservation of a poetic paradise…“Kubla Khan” is a pagan celebration of creative…
Continue Reading →Birth of Virgil
Painting of the poet by Luca Signorelli
15 October, AD 70: Virgil, the greatest Roman poet, was born near Mantua. His great works are The Eclogues: O let the last days of a long life remain to me, and the inspiration to tell how great your deeds will be: Thracian Orpheus and Linus will not overcome me in song, though his mother helps the one, his father the other.* The mock-rural The Georgics: So, the sun will give you signs of what late evening brings, and from where a fair-weather wind blows the clouds, or what the rain-filled southerly intends. Who dares to say the sun tricks…
Continue Reading →The Library Agenda
"With you in charge, I am at ease." by Li Yansheng (1976) (Displayed in a series of prints venerating Chairman Mao at the Australian National Library, 2017)
(On the occasion of a rather chilly visit to the National Library, Canberra) Entering the library, one feels alone, No comfort on these shelves, no phone, No sense of welcome or assistance, Proprietorial resistance. No books in sight; no chores to do, Ideas not enclosed, neither old nor new. Heroes extolled in olden times Are traduced for their voguish crimes. I lack the time, I lack the means To gather up the left-wing magazines In serried ranks, beneath gold frames Of left-wing folks with famous names. There’s Ben Chifley, Lenin, Mao Zedong, Jack Lang and Trotsky, Marx and Huey Long,…
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