Hear Zora Neale Hurston Sing Traditional American Folk Song “Mule on the Mount” (1939)

in Literature, Music | September 20th, 2012

zora neal hurston

Two years before the 1937 pub­li­ca­tion of her nov­el Their Eyes Were Watch­ing God, Zora Neale Hurston pub­lished a col­lec­tion of African-Amer­i­can folk­lore called Of Mules and Men. She did so as an author­i­ty on the sub­ject and a trained anthro­pol­o­gist who had stud­ied under the most well-regard­ed fig­ure in the dis­ci­pline at the time, Franz Boas. Her study was both a per­son­al and a pro­fes­sion­al under­tak­ing for her; although Hurston had grown up in the Deep South—in Eatonville, Florida—she cred­it­ed her aca­d­e­m­ic train­ing with giv­ing her the crit­i­cal dis­tance to real­ly see the cul­ture on its own terms. As she puts it in the Intro­duc­tion to Of Mules and Men, she had known black South­ern cul­ture “from the ear­li­est rock­ing of my cra­dle… but it was fit­ting me like a tight chemise. I couldn’t see it for wear­ing it…. I had to have the spy-glass of Anthro­pol­o­gy to look through at that.”

After receiv­ing her B.A. from Barnard, Hurston trav­eled exten­sive­ly in the South and the Caribbean in the 1930s to doc­u­ment local cul­tures and con­duct field research. Her work was part­ly spon­sored by a Guggen­heim fel­low­ship and part­ly by Roosevelt’s Works Progress Admin­is­tra­tion, whose Fed­er­al Writ­ers Project spon­sored sev­er­al oth­er black writ­ers like Ralph Elli­son, Claude McK­ay, and Richard Wright. Work­ing at times with cel­e­brat­ed folk­lorists Stet­son Kennedy and Alan Lomax, Hurston col­lect­ed record­ings of South­ern and Caribbean sto­ries and folk songs, often telling or singing them her­self. In the clip above, from June 18, 1939, Hurston sings a song she calls “Mule on the Mount.” In the first minute and a half of the record­ing, you can hear Hurston describe the song’s ori­gins and many vari­a­tions to some­one (pos­si­bly Lomax) in the back­ground. She explains how she came to know the song, first hear­ing it in her home­town of Eatonville. Then she begins to sing, in a high, sweet voice, with all the into­na­tion of a true blues singer, punc­tu­at­ing the vers­es with snorts and grunts, as many folk songs—often work songs—would be, though in this case, the snorts may be mule snorts. The record­ing reveals Hurston as a tal­ent­ed inter­preter of her mate­r­i­al, to say the least.

The songs and sto­ries Hurston col­lect­ed, in addi­tion to her child­hood expe­ri­ences, pro­vid­ed her with much of the mate­r­i­al for her nov­els, sto­ries, and plays. Sev­er­al more of her WPA record­ings, also sung by her, are online as mp3s at the Flori­da Depart­ment of State’s “Flori­da Mem­o­ry” project. The orig­i­nals are housed at the Library of Congress’s “Flori­da Folk­life” col­lec­tion. Hurston’s crit­i­cal and cre­ative work brought her renown in her life­time not only as a writer, but as a pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al and folk­lorist as well—hear her talk, some­what reluc­tant­ly, about Hait­ian zom­bies in a 1943 radio inter­view on the pop­u­lar Mary Mar­garet McBride show. Sad­ly, Hurston passed her final years in obscu­ri­ty and her work was neglect­ed for a cou­ple decades until a revival in the 70s lead by Alice Walk­er. She’s nev­er been known as a singer, but after lis­ten­ing to the above record­ing, you might agree she should be.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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“Single Sentence Animations” Visualize the Short Stories of Contemporary Writers

in Animation, Books, Literature | September 19th, 2012

Lit­er­ary jour­nal Elec­tric Lit­er­a­ture has a mis­sion, to “use new media and inno­v­a­tive dis­tri­b­u­tion to return the short sto­ry to a place of promi­nence in pop­u­lar cul­ture.” In so doing, they promise to deliv­er their quar­ter­ly, 5‑story anthol­o­gy “in every viable medi­um”: paper­back, enhanced pdf, Kin­dle, and ePub.  One clever way they pro­mote short fic­tion is with a free, week­ly sin­gle-sto­ry fea­ture called “Rec­om­mend­ed Read­ing.” And with the help of an ani­ma­tor and a musi­cian, Elec­tric Jour­nal pro­duces what it calls a “Sin­gle Sen­tence Ani­ma­tion” of each week’s rec­om­mend­ed sto­ry.

As the jour­nal describes these short videos, “Sin­gle Sen­tence Ani­ma­tions are cre­ative col­lab­o­ra­tions. The writer selects a favorite sen­tence from his or her work and the ani­ma­tor cre­ates a short film in response.” The Sin­gle Sen­tence Ani­ma­tion above draws from from A.M. Homes’ “Hel­lo Every­body,” as imag­ined by artist Gret­ta John­son and with music by Michael Asif. The ani­ma­tion cap­tures some­thing of Homes’ “par­tic­u­lar blend of log­ic and unre­al­i­ty” as well as her strange and often unnerv­ing twists of lan­guage.  Homes chose the ser­pen­tine sen­tence:

They are mak­ing their bod­ies their own—renovating, redec­o­rat­ing, the body not just as cor­pus but as object of self-expres­sion, a sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion between imag­i­na­tion and real­i­ty.

Johnson’s ani­ma­tion imag­ines the body as Play-doh, a mal­leable sub­stance, unre­strict­ed by fixed forms.

In anoth­er “Sin­gle Sen­tence Ani­ma­tion,” Ben Marcus’s intri­cate “Watch­ing Mys­ter­ies with My Moth­er” gets inter­pret­ed by Edwin Ros­tron, with music by Supreme Vagabond Crafts­man. The sen­tence Mar­cus chose is:

We speak of hav­ing one foot in the grave, but we do not speak of hav­ing both feet and both legs and then one’s entire tor­so, arms, and head in the grave, inside a cof­fin, which is cov­ered in dirt, upon which is plant­ed a pret­ty lit­tle stone.

As Marcus’s sen­tence drills through clichéd euphemism into the mor­bid and mun­dane, Rostron’s ani­ma­tion peels back lay­ers of dead metaphor to encounter the pro­sa­ic.

Elec­tric Lit­er­a­ture’s Rec­om­mend­ed Read­ing series also fea­tures free online sto­ries from Mary Gait­skill, Clarice Lispec­tor, Peter Stamm, and many oth­ers, in HTML, Kin­dle, or ePub. You can watch all of the Sin­gle Sen­tence Ani­ma­tions here.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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How Leo Tolstoy Learned to Ride a Bike at 67, and Other Tales of Lifelong Learning

in Life, Literature | September 15th, 2012

Some say you’re nev­er too old to learn some­thing new. Oth­ers say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Well, you know where we come down on this. And we’ve got some celebri­ty case stud­ies to back us up. In a blog post yes­ter­day, The New York Times fea­tured four cul­tur­al icons and one war hero who learned new skills lat­er in life. Miles Davis start­ed box­ing when most box­ers are hang­ing up their gloves. Ayn Rand, in her 60s, improb­a­bly took up the hob­by of stamp col­lect­ing. Marie Curie learned to swim in her 50s. And the great nov­el­ist Leo Tol­stoy took his first bike ride at the age of 67. The Times writes that he start­ed cycling:

only a month after the death of his 7‑year-old son, Vanich­ka. He was still griev­ing, and the Moscow Soci­ety of Veloci­pede-Lovers pro­vid­ed him a free bike and instruc­tion along the gar­den paths on his estate. He became a devo­tee, tak­ing rides after his morn­ing chores. “Count Leo Tol­stoy … now rides the wheel,” declared Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can in 1896, “much to the aston­ish­ment of the peas­ants on his estate.”

Appar­ent­ly that’s Tol­stoy and his bike above.

via @kirstinbutler

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Last Days of Leo Tol­stoy Cap­tured on Video

Rare Record­ing: Leo Tol­stoy Reads From His Last Major Work in Four Lan­guages, 1909

The Art of Leo Tol­stoy: See His Draw­ings in the War & Peace Man­u­script & Oth­er Lit­er­ary Texts

 

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William S. Burroughs Shows You How to Make “Shotgun Art”

in Art, Literature | September 14th, 2012

It’s no secret that William S. Bur­roughs liked guns. He’s shot both Shake­speare and him­self in effi­gy, and in a bizarre and trag­ic acci­dent, he shot and killed his wife. In addi­tion to shoot­ing at peo­ple, he also shot at spray paint cans to cre­ate abstract paint­ings, known as “shot­gun art.” His paint­ings have appeared in gal­leries and one of them, once owned by Tim­o­thy Leary, was auc­tioned off a few years ago on Ebay. In the film above (date unknown), watch Bur­roughs in action with a rifle. He described the process in an inter­view with Gre­go­ry Ego:

There is no exact process. If you want to do shot­gun art, you take a piece of ply­wood, put a can of spray paint in front of it, and shoot it with a shot­gun or high pow­ered rifle. The paint’s under high pres­sure so it explodes! Throws the can 300 feet. The paint sprays in explod­ing col­or across your sur­face. You can have as many col­ors as you want. Turn it around, do it side­ways, and have one col­or com­ing in from this side and this side. Of course, they hit. Mix in all kinds of unpre­dictable pat­terns. This is relat­ed to Pol­lack­’s drip can­vas­es, although this is a rather more basi­cal­ly ran­dom process, there’s no pos­si­bil­i­ty of pre­dict­ing what pat­terns you’re going to get.

This is, admit­ted­ly, a very lo-fi film. It appears to have been shot on super‑8, and about two thirds of the way through, the cam­era flips upside down, then seems to have been tossed into a car. The sound goes out, and the last minute cap­tures a cloud-strewn Kansans sky speed­ing by in silence. It’s a strange and cap­ti­vat­ing piece of found art that, like Bur­roughs’ work, con­tains casu­al vio­lence, odd per­spec­tives, herky-jerky edit­ing, sud­den con­fu­sion and upheaval, and rare moments of beau­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When William S. Bur­roughs Appeared on Sat­ur­day Night Live: His First TV Appear­ance (1981)

William S. Bur­roughs Teach­es a Free Course on Cre­ative Read­ing and Writ­ing (1979)

William S. Bur­roughs Sends Anti-Fan Let­ter to In Cold Blood Author Tru­man Capote: “You Have Sold Out Your Tal­ent”

William S. Bur­roughs Explains What Artists & Cre­ative Thinkers Do for Human­i­ty: From Galileo to Cézanne and James Joyce

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Gertrude Stein Recites ‘If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso’

in Literature, Poetry | September 13th, 2012

Although her own works are sel­dom read, Gertrude Stein cast an impos­ing shad­ow over the evo­lu­tion of 20th cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture. Like oth­er high mod­ernists, she broke from tra­di­tion to exper­i­ment with new forms, but where­as her rival James Joyce’s writ­ing became more dense and com­plex over time, Stein’s became abstract and sim­ple. Like Paul Cézanne and oth­er mod­ern painters, Stein sought to tran­scend rep­re­sen­ta­tion and reveal an under­ly­ing struc­ture in the per­cep­tu­al world. Her non­lin­ear prose and poet­ry are like paint­ings, frozen in what she called a “con­tin­u­ous present.” As Jonathan Levin writes in the Barnes & Noble Clas­sics edi­tion of Stein’s Three Lives:

Stein clear­ly takes plea­sure in words, almost in a way that a sev­en-year-old might, end­less­ly repeat­ing a word, and var­i­ous­ly inflect­ing it, to the point that it is effec­tive­ly emp­tied of all mean­ing. Rely­ing most­ly on sim­ple, often mono­syl­lab­ic words, Stein wields lan­guage much as the mod­ern painters she admired and col­lect­ed were wield­ing paint, sug­gest­ing form through a rad­i­cal­ly sim­pli­fied use of line and color.…By com­bin­ing and repeat­ing such sim­ple words and phras­es, Stein helped rein­vent the Eng­lish lan­guage for the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Much as Paul Cézanne, Hen­ri Matisse, and Pablo Picas­so helped peo­ple under­stand how the eye con­structs its field of vision, so Stein helped read­ers under­stand how words con­struct a field of mean­ing.

But most read­ers find Stein tedious and unin­tel­li­gi­ble. As Edmund Wil­son writes in Axel’s Cas­tle: A Study in the imag­i­na­tive Lit­er­a­ture of 1870–1930, “Most of us balk at her soporif­ic rig­maroles, her echolali­ac incan­ta­tions, her half-wit­ted-sound­ing cat­a­logues of num­bers; most of us read her less and less. Yet, remem­ber­ing espe­cial­ly her ear­ly work, we are still always aware of her pres­ence in the back­ground of con­tem­po­rary lit­er­a­ture.”

Among the writ­ers who knew Stein and were influ­enced by her was Ernest Hem­ing­way. Echoes of Stein’s rhythms and rep­e­ti­tions can be sensed in some of Hem­ing­way’s prose. In his pos­tu­mous­ly pub­lished mem­oir, A Move­able Feast, Hem­ing­way offers his own frank assess­ment of Stein and the nature of her influ­ence:

She had such a per­son­al­i­ty that when she wished to win any­one over to her side she would not be resist­ed, and crit­ics who met her and saw her pic­tures took on trust writ­ing of hers that they could not under­stand because of their enthu­si­asm for her as a per­son, and because of their con­fi­dence in her judge­ment. She had also dis­cov­ered many truths about rhythms and the uses of words in rep­e­ti­tion that were valid and valu­able and she talked well about them.

For a sense of Stein’s exper­i­men­tal style you can lis­ten above as she recites “If I Told Him: A Com­plet­ed Por­trait of Picas­so,” a poem Stein wrote in the sum­mer of 1923 while vis­it­ing her friend Pablo Picas­so on the French Riv­iera. (To read along as you lis­ten, click here to open the text in a new win­dow.) The record­ing was made in New York dur­ing the win­ter of 1934–35, when Stein was pro­mot­ing her pop­u­lar but less exper­i­men­tal book The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Alice B. Tok­las. Encoun­ter­ing Stein today, we can still feel the same annoyed bewil­der­ment that her first read­ers felt. “Per­haps,” writes Levin, “this is because lan­guage, unlike paint, does not sim­ply become ‘beau­ti­ful’ once a style is wide­ly accept­ed. In any event, we might con­sid­er our­selves for­tu­nate to be able still to feel what is shock­ing and irri­tat­ing in mod­ern writ­ing. It reminds us that we are in the pres­ence of some­thing that still feels gen­uine­ly new and dif­fer­ent.”

To hear more of Stein recit­ing, and to hear a rare record­ed inter­view of her from 1934, vis­it the archive at PennSound. And to read sev­er­al of Stein’s works, please vis­it our col­lec­tion of 375 Free eBooks.

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Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit: A BBC Adaptation Starring Harold Pinter (1964)

in Literature, Philosophy | September 13th, 2012

Each time I see a ref­er­ence to Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit (Huis Clos), I think of the night­club scene in Bret Eas­t­on Ellis’s Amer­i­can Psy­cho, which is fit­ting since that nov­el is, in a sense, about a group of peo­ple who hate each oth­er. No Exit con­jures Sartre’s famous phrase “Hell is oth­er peo­ple,” but in the play, hell is, more accu­rate­ly, oneself—or the inabil­i­ty to leave one­self, to “take a lit­tle break,” by sleep­ing, turn­ing off the lights, or even blink­ing. Hell, in Sartre’s play, means being end­less­ly con­front­ed with the sor­did triv­i­al­i­ties of one’s self through the eyes of oth­er peo­ple. Trapped in a room with them, to be exact, for­ev­er. It’s a chill­ing con­cept.

In this BBC adap­ta­tion of Sartre’s play, called In Cam­era, cer­tain details have changed. Instead of the “Sec­ond Empire fur­ni­ture” from Sartre’s descrip­tions of the hell­ish room, we have a bright­ly-lit mod­ernist gallery space. The bronze objet d’art in Sartre’s play has been replaced by mas­sive abstract paint­ing and sculp­ture, a com­men­tary, per­haps, on the way the bour­geois space of art gal­leries impos­es arti­fi­cial deco­rum on every­one inside. It’s as incon­gru­ous with the sit­u­a­tion as the haughty draw­ing room of the orig­i­nal. Aside from the mise en scene, In Cam­era is large­ly faith­ful to the dia­logue and char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Sartre’s play. Fea­tur­ing absur­dist play­wright Harold Pin­ter as the insuf­fer­able writer and jour­nal­ist Garcin, Jane Arden as Inez, Kather­ine Woodville as Estelle, and Jonathan Hansen as the valet, In Cam­era was part of the BBC series “The Wednes­day Play,” which ran from 1964 to 1970 and pre­sent­ed orig­i­nal work and the occa­sion­al adap­ta­tion. Only the sec­ond episode in the series, In Cam­era ran on Novem­ber 4th, 1964 and was adapt­ed and direct­ed from Sartre’s orig­i­nal by Philip Sav­ille.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jean-Paul Sartre Breaks Down the Bad Faith of Intel­lec­tu­als

Sartre, Hei­deg­ger, Niet­zsche: Three Philoso­phers in Three Hours

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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O. Henry on the Secrets of Writing Short Stories: Rare Audio Recording

in Books, Literature, Writing | September 11th, 2012

Today is the 150th anniver­sary of the birth of the short sto­ry writer O. Hen­ry. He was born William Syd­ney Porter in Greens­boro North Car­oli­na on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1862, and his life was not easy. He chose the pen name “O. Hen­ry” while he was in the pen­i­ten­tiary.

Trained as a phar­ma­cist, Porter came down with tuber­cu­lo­sis in his ear­ly twen­ties and moved to the dri­er cli­mate of Texas, where he worked as a ranch hand, a drafts­man for the Texas Land Office, and a clerk at the First Nation­al Bank of Austin before strik­ing out on his own as a writer and launch­ing a humor mag­a­zine called The Rolling Stone. When the mag­a­zine fold­ed the fol­low­ing year, Porter took a job as a reporter, colum­nist and car­toon­ist at the Hous­ton Post. Mean­while, though, Fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors were look­ing into short­ages in Porter’s accounts from his days at the bank in Austin, and in Feb­ru­ary of 1896, when he was 33 years old and had a wife and a young daugh­ter to sup­port, Porter was arrest­ed and charged with embez­zle­ment.

While being brought to Austin for tri­al, Porter man­aged to elude his cap­tors and hop a train to New Orleans, where he arranged pas­sage on a freighter bound for Hon­duras. Despite the appear­ance of guilt Porter would always main­tain his inno­cence, say­ing that his flight from jus­tice was brought on by pan­ic. He com­pared him­self to the pro­tag­o­nist of one of Joseph Con­rad’s clas­sic nov­els, a sailor who aban­doned a ful­ly loaded pas­sen­ger ship that he thought was sink­ing. “I am like Lord Jim,” he said, “because we both made one fate­ful mis­take at the supreme cri­sis of our lives, a mis­take from which we could not recov­er.”

When Porter got to Cen­tral Amer­i­ca he began mak­ing plans for his fam­i­ly to join him there, but soon learned that his wife was dying of tuber­cu­lo­sis. He returned to Texas and was with his wife when she died. A few months lat­er he was sen­tenced to five years in a fed­er­al pen­i­ten­tiary in Ohio. While behind bars, Porter began writ­ing short sto­ries in earnest. To dis­guise his iden­ti­ty he used a series of pen names, even­tu­al­ly set­tling on “O. Hen­ry.”

Porter was released from prison in 1901, two years ear­ly for good behav­ior. He moved to New York to write sto­ries under his new name for mag­a­zines. From there he sky­rock­et­ed to suc­cess. Between 1904 and his death in 1910, he pub­lished some 300 sto­ries and ten books. “O. Hen­ry worked at whirl­wind speed,” writes Vic­to­ria Blake in the Barnes & Noble Clas­sics edi­tion of Select­ed Sto­ries of O. Hen­ry, “pro­duc­ing more over a short­er peri­od than any oth­er writer of his time and cul­ti­vat­ing a lit­er­ary demand unmatched by any­one, any­where in the his­to­ry of Amer­i­can let­ters.”

Some of the very same ele­ments that made O. Hen­ry’s sto­ries so pop­u­lar in his lifetime–the sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty, the “twist” endings–have caused them to age poor­ly since his death. A few of his sto­ries, like “The Gift of the Magi,” are still wide­ly read, but his rep­u­ta­tion has been sur­passed by more mod­ern writ­ers like Ernest Hem­ing­way, James Joyce and Sher­wood Ander­son. A lit­tle of his for­mer pres­tige is revived every year with the award­ing of the O. Hen­ry Prize for the best short fic­tion.

For his 150th birth­day we bring you what is said to be a rare record­ing of O. Hen­ry’s voice. Although the date and authen­tic­i­ty are an open ques­tion, the record­ing was appar­ent­ly made on an Edi­son cylin­der some­time between 1905 and the writer’s death in 1910. It was includ­ed in the vinyl record The Gold­en Age of Opera: Great Per­son­al­i­ties, 1888–1940. Here is a tran­script:

This is William Syd­ney Porter speak­ing, bet­ter known to you, no doubt, as O. Hen­ry. I’m going to let you in on a few of my secrets in writ­ing a short sto­ry. The most impor­tant thing, at least in my hum­ble opin­ion, is to use char­ac­ters you’ve crossed in your life­time. Truth is indeed stranger than fic­tion. All of my sto­ries are actu­al expe­ri­ences that I have come across dur­ing my trav­els. My char­ac­ters are fac­sim­i­lies of actu­al peo­ple I’ve known. Most authors spend hours, I’m told even days, labor­ing over out­lines of sto­ries that they have in their minds. But not I. In my way of think­ing that’s a waste of good time. I just sit down and let my pen­cil do the rest. Many peo­ple ask me how I man­age to get that final lit­tle twist in my sto­ries. I always tell them that the unusu­al is the ordi­nary rather than the unex­pect­ed. And if you peo­ple lis­ten­ing to me now start think­ing about your own lives, I’m sure you’ll dis­cov­er just as many odd expe­ri­ences as I’ve had. I hope this lit­tle talk will be heard long after I’m gone. I want you all to con­tin­ue read­ing my sto­ries then too. Good­bye, folks.

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Stein­beck­’s Six Tips for the Aspir­ing Writer

James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plura­belle’ from Finnegans Wake

Rare 1959 Audio: Flan­nery O’Con­nor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’

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Listen to J.R.R. Tolkien Read Poems from The Fellowship of the Ring, in Elvish and English (1952)

in Literature, Poetry | September 10th, 2012

In my book Cate Blanchett can do no wrong, but her per­for­mance in the Lord of the Rings movies was par­tic­u­lar­ly spell­bind­ing, espe­cial­ly when she spoke the Elvish lan­guage of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fan­ta­sy uni­verse. Of course, the spell was cast long before when Tolkien used his back­ground as a lin­guist, his­to­ri­an, and lit­er­ary schol­ar to cre­ate the elab­o­rate tongue that he called Quenya. In the short clip above, Tolkien him­self recites the Elvish poem Namarie, or Galadriel’s lament, from The Fel­low­ship of the Ring nov­el (it does­n’t appear in the film). Namarie trans­lates as “Farewell,” and the poem in Eng­lish reads thus:

Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind, long years
num­ber­less as the wings of trees! The long years
have passed like swift draughts of the sweet mead
in lofty halls beyond the West, beneath the blue
vaults of Var­da where­in the stars trem­ble in the
song of her voice, holy and queen­ly.

Who now shall refill the cup for me?

For now the Kindler, Var­da, the Queen of Stars,
from Mount Ever­white has uplift­ed her hands like
clouds, and all paths are drowned deep in shad­ow;
and out of a grey coun­try dark­ness lies on the
foam­ing waves between us, and mist cov­ers the
jew­els of Calacirya for ever. Now lost, lost for
those from the East is Val­i­mar!

Farewell! Maybe thou shalt find Val­i­mar. Maybe
even thou shalt find it. Farewell!

The Tolkien record­ing pre­dates by two years the 1954 pub­li­ca­tion of the novel—the first of the Ring tril­o­gy. As sci-fi blog i09 notes, Namarie has been set to music, some­times against Tolkien’s wish­es, by sev­er­al com­posers. Tolkien did autho­rize one com­po­si­tion from Don­ald Swann, includ­ed on the album Poems and Songs of Mid­dle Earth (1967), a song cycle from The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien gave Swann the melody, and singer William Elvin’s tenor accen­tu­at­ed the medieval, Celtic qual­i­ty of the poem. A fan put togeth­er the video below.

The oth­er thir­teen com­po­si­tions on Poems and Songs are in Eng­lish (Tolkien’s poet­ic skill in his own tongue is per­haps under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed). In the short clip below, hear him read “The Song of Durin,” from Fel­low­ship of the Ring, a song sung by Gim­li the dwarf as the fel­low­ship jour­neys deep into the mines of Moria.

As Peter Jack­son brings Mid­dle Earth back to life in the the­ater this Decem­ber, it’s a good time to brush up on your Tolkien lore. Don’t have time to reread The Hob­bit? Lis­ten to Youtube user “Ephemer­al Rift” read the entire nov­el in a whis­per. He’s up to Chap­ter 2 and promis­es to fin­ish in time for the first film’s release.

h/t red­dit & i09

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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