W.B. Yeats’ Classic Poem “When You Are Old” Gets Adapted Into a Beautiful Short Film

in Film, Poetry | February 27th, 2017

W.B. Yeats’ 1891 poem “When You Are Old” is wide­ly con­sid­ered a com­men­tary on his unre­quit­ed life­long pas­sion for actress, Irish Repub­li­can and suf­fragette Maud Gonne.

Yeats first met Gonne in 1889 (a meet­ing which Yeats was lat­er to describe in his mem­oirs as the day ‘the trou­bling of my life began’) and he remained in love with her for much of his life, propos­ing mar­riage at least four times. Gonne became his muse, and he drew on his tor­tured love for her, albeit unnamed, as the inspi­ra­tion for many of his works, includ­ing most notably the poem, “When You Are Old.”

Freely based on a son­net by Pierre de Ron­sard, which first appeared in Le Sec­ond Livre Des Son­nets Pour Hélène in 1578, “When You Are Old” enjoins the object of an unre­turned love to reflect–in years to come–on a love reject­ed, to remem­ber one who ‘loved your moments of glad grace’, and who ‘loved the pil­grim soul in you, And loved the sor­rows of your chang­ing face.’

Although Yeats’s poet­ry is often very dense and rich in allu­sion to mythol­o­gy, the occult and his­to­ry, in “When You Are Old” the pain and bit­ter­sweet nature of a spurned love is all too appar­ent.

Aus­tralian play­wright Jes­si­ca Bel­lamy drew on the poem and her love of W.B. Yeats’ work when writ­ing the the­atre mono­logue “Lit­tle Love,” which she then adapt­ed with direc­tor Damien Pow­er to cre­ate the short film Bat Eyes. Watch it above.

In Bat Eyes, Adam and Jen­ny (‘Bat Eyes’) Bar­rett are brought togeth­er through an inci­dent of class­room bul­ly­ing. Through the metaphor of visu­al impair­ment and an eye exam­i­na­tion under­gone by an adult Adam, Bel­lamy and Pow­er explore the poem’s themes of long­ing, insight, rev­e­la­tion and regret, and poet­ry’s capac­i­ty to pro­vide solace and awak­en empa­thy in every­day life. The script of this beau­ti­ful short film con­sists prin­ci­pal­ly of the text of the poem, with the film’s two young leads repeat­ing Yeats’ words back and forth to each oth­er, as the sto­ry flips back and forth in time, the mean­ing of the lines becom­ing more tan­gi­ble and res­o­nant with each recita­tion.

Says Jes­si­ca Bel­lamy:

‘Yeats writes about ancient mythol­o­gy and the his­to­ry of his time, but you don’t have to under­stand all that to get the feel­ing of what he has to say. There are lines, there are moments that, as a read­er, you just get and you think: I’m not alone in this world and that some­one else has felt these things as well. I hope view­ers will hear the truth of what this poem is say­ing, and that they’ll see the film as an ode to love, rela­tion­ships and to poet­ry itself.

Gonne, who died in 1953, out­lived Yeats by 14 years. She was pho­tographed by Life mag­a­zine in Octo­ber 1948, old and grey, sit­ting by a fire and read­ing Yeats poet­ry.

You can watch the orig­i­nal mono­logue, “Lit­tle Love,” here:

And read and lis­ten to the text of “When You Are Old” here. There’s also a ver­sion read by Col­in Far­rell. Find it below.

Dan Prichard is an online film and web­series pro­duc­er, based in Syd­ney, whose work explores iden­ti­ty, place, and the space between film and per­for­mance in the dig­i­tal are­na. Vis­it his web­site here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare 1930s Audio: W.B. Yeats Reads Four of His Poems

Aleis­ter Crow­ley & William But­ler Yeats Get into an Occult Bat­tle, Pit­ting White Mag­ic Against Black Mag­ic (1900)

T.S. Eliot’s Clas­sic Poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Gets Adapt­ed into a Hip Mod­ern Film

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Rare Recordings of Burroughs, Bukowski, Ginsberg & More Now Available in a Digital Archive Created by the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA)

in Art, Internet Archive, Poetry | February 22nd, 2017

Image via Chris­ti­aan Ton­nis

Amer­i­cans can be quite igno­rant of the rich­ness of our coun­try’s cul­tur­al his­to­ry. Part of this igno­rance, I sus­pect, comes down to prej­u­dice. Inno­v­a­tive Amer­i­can artists through­out his­to­ry have come from groups often demo­nized and mar­gin­al­ized by the wider soci­ety. The dom­i­nance of cor­po­rate com­merce also impov­er­ish­es the cul­tur­al land­scape. Poet­ry and exper­i­men­tal art don’t sell much, so some peo­ple think they have lit­tle val­ue.

Imag­ine if we were to invert these atti­tudes in pub­lic opin­ion: Amer­i­can poet­ry and art allow us to gain new per­spec­tives from peo­ple and parts of the coun­try we don’t know well; to enlarge and chal­lenge our reli­gious and polit­i­cal under­stand­ing; to expe­ri­ence a very dif­fer­ent kind of econ­o­my, built on aes­thet­ic inven­tion and free intel­lec­tu­al enter­prise rather than sup­ply, demand, and prof­it. Cre­ativ­i­ty and finance are not, of course, mutu­al­ly exclu­sive. But to con­sis­tent­ly favor one at the expense of the oth­er seems to me a great loss to every­one.

We find our­selves now in such a sit­u­a­tion, as pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties, the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts, the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties, and the Cor­po­ra­tion for Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing face severe cuts or pos­si­ble de-fund­ing.

Such a polit­i­cal move would dev­as­tate many of the insti­tu­tions that fos­ter and pre­serve the country’s art and cul­ture, and rel­e­gate the arts to the pri­vate sphere, where only sums of pri­vate mon­ey deter­mine whose voic­es get heard. We can, how­ev­er, be very appre­cia­tive of pri­vate insti­tu­tions who make their col­lec­tions pub­lic through open access libraries like the Inter­net Archive.

One such col­lec­tion comes from the Dig­i­tal Ini­tia­tives Unit of Deck­er Library at the Mary­land Insti­tute Col­lege of Art (MICA), one of the old­est art col­leges in the U.S., and one of the most high­ly regard­ed. They have dig­i­tal­ly donat­ed to Archive.org “a num­ber of rare and pre­vi­ous­ly unre­leased audio record­ings,” they write in a press release, “span­ning the 1960s through the late 1990s” and con­sist­ing of “over 700 audio­cas­sette tapes” doc­u­ment­ing “lit­er­a­ture and poet­ry read­ings, fine art and design lec­tures, race and cul­ture dis­cus­sions” and col­lege events.

These include (enter the archive here) a two hour poet­ry read­ing from Allen Gins­berg in 1978, at the top, with sev­er­al oth­er read­ings and talks from Gins­berg in the archive, the read­ing below it from Eileen Myles in 1992, and read­ings and talks above and below from Amiri Bara­ka, Anne Wald­man, and William S. Bur­roughs. The col­lec­tion rep­re­sents a “strong focus on lit­er­a­ture and poet­ry,” and fea­tures “a sym­po­sium on the Black Moun­tain poets.” Giv­en the school’s mis­sion, you’ll also find in the archive “a large selec­tion of talks and lec­tures by visu­al artists, such as Elaine de Koon­ing, Alice Neel, Gor­don Parks, Ad Rhine­hart and Ben Shahn.”

Col­lec­tions like this one from MICA and the Inter­net Archive allow any­one with inter­net access to expe­ri­ence in some part the breadth and range of Amer­i­can art and poet­ry, no mat­ter their lev­el of access to pri­vate insti­tu­tions and sources of wealth. But the inter­net can­not ful­ly replace or sup­plant the need for pub­licly fund­ed arts ini­tia­tives in com­mu­ni­ties nation­wide.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An 18-Hour Playlist of Read­ings by the Beats: Ker­ouac, Gins­berg & Even Bukows­ki Too

13 Lec­tures from Allen Ginsberg’s “His­to­ry of Poet­ry” Course (1975)

Hear Allen Gins­berg Teach “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats”: Audio Lec­tures from His 1977 & 1981 Naropa Cours­es

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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T.S. Eliot’s Classic Poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Gets Adapted into a Hip Modern Film

in Film, Poetry | February 1st, 2017

T.S. Eliot’s mod­ernist poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” gives us a psy­cho­log­i­cal por­trait of a neu­rot­ic char­ac­ter who elo­quent­ly per­se­ver­ates on the nature of his exis­tence and the weak­ness of his will. The poem is a dream, but not an erot­ic one. Prufrock’s libido is too tied up in knots of self-doubt and self-con­scious­ness for that. Though he moves through a high class broth­el, he hard­ly ever seems to touch anoth­er per­son, ask­ing him­self repeat­ed­ly, “Do I dare?”

“I am no prophet,” mus­es Prufrock, his name con­jur­ing a kind of gaunt Puri­tan­i­cal fig­ure who fears that “the eter­nal Foot­man” and the women who come and go are laugh­ing at him. Prufrock is pathet­ic and ridicu­lous, and he knows it. He escapes from the hell that is his life (the poem opens with an epi­graph from Dante’s Infer­no) with elab­o­rate sym­bol­ist day­dreams. He is a dandy­ish ver­sion of James Thurber’s Wal­ter Mit­ty.

You may be for­giv­en for see­ing few of these qual­i­ties in the cen­tral char­ac­ter of “A Lovesong,” a short film by direc­tor Lau­ra Scrivano and star­ring Daniel Hen­shall (from the AMC series TURN: Wash­ing­ton’s Spies). They are not there. The project sup­pos­ed­ly arose from Henshall’s own fas­ci­na­tion with the poem. But in this adap­ta­tion of it, Prufrock—if we can call Henshall’s char­ac­ter by that name—seems to have no trou­ble with his libido.

Henshall’s soli­tary fig­ure is pen­sive, brood­ing, and hip—a whiskey-sip­ping Brook­lyn flâneur—mov­ing between a seduc­tive night­time New York and a sleep­ing lover in bed, recall­ing per­haps Prufrock’s ref­er­ence to “one-night cheap hotels.” The film is a unique inter­pre­ta­tion of Eliot’s com­men­tary on mod­ern alien­ation, one per­haps suit­ed to our moment. Yet, we would half-expect that any con­tem­po­rary Prufrock would wan­der the streets lost in his smart­phone, fret­ting over his lack of suf­fi­cient “likes.”

For con­trast to this styl­ish reimag­ing of “Prufrock,” we can hear Eliot him­self read from the poem just above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

T.S. Eliot Reads His Mod­ernist Mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Young T.S. Eliot Writes “The Tri­umph of Bullsh*t” and Gives the Eng­lish Lan­guage a New Exple­tive (1910)

T.S. Eliot’s Rad­i­cal Poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Read by Antho­ny Hop­kins and Eliot Him­self

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear Jeremy Irons Read the Poetry of T.S. Eliot (Available for a Limited Time)

in Poetry, Radio | January 25th, 2017

We may have come near­ly to the end of Jan­u­ary already, but we can still call 2017 a new year — at least until we’ve lis­tened to the poet­ry of T.S. Eliot to prop­er­ly ring it in. “There’s sure­ly no bet­ter poet than Eliot to help us con­front the prob­lem of find­ing mean­ing in a world where old cer­tain­ties are being trou­bled,” says Martha Kear­ney, host of BBC Radio 4’s New Year’s series cel­e­brat­ing his work.

“Our lives are so busy now that we need some help from the sea­son to just take stock, both of where we’ve been and where we might like to go to,” says the first episode’s guest, nov­el­ist Jeanette Win­ter­son. We need to inhab­it “that inward moment that poet­ry’s so good at,” and that Eliot made entire­ly his own. The bulk of that broad­cast com­pris­es a read­ing of Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by Jere­my Irons, sure­ly one of the poet­’s ide­al liv­ing inter­preters. (Note: you can stream all of the episodes in the series here.)

Irons reads more in the sec­ond, which includes a dis­cus­sion with Win­ter­son and Antho­ny Julius, Chair of Law and the Arts and Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don, about the open­ing of “Geron­tion” and the “ugly ref­er­ences” made in Eliot’s oth­er poems. The dis­cus­sion in the third, in which Irons takes on Eliot’s immor­tal “The Waste Land,” looks for the source of the pow­er of its “poet­ry of frag­ments” with for­mer Arch­bish­op of Can­ter­bury Rowan Williams and Scots Makar (some­thing like a Poet Lau­re­ate of Scot­land) Jack­ie Kay.

“The Waste Land” con­tin­ues as a sub­ject in part four, as its guest, the actress Fiona Shaw, has drawn acclaim for her own read­ing of the poem, but the Irons sec­tion of the broad­cast offers var­i­ous oth­er selec­tions, includ­ing “The Hol­low Men,” “Ash Wednes­day,” and “Jour­ney of the Magi.” Final­ly, in part five, Kear­ney and Rory Stew­art, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment and man of let­ters, talk about and hear Irons deliv­er Eliot’s “Four Quar­tets,” whose lan­guage Stew­art mem­o­rized on a walk through Nepal and which he lat­er used dur­ing his polit­i­cal cam­paign.

This poet­ic, con­ver­sa­tion­al, and per­for­ma­tive radio feast comes to near­ly four hours (lis­ten to all of the episodes here), but you’ve got only the next six days to stream it. Oth­er­wise you’ll have to wait until Radio 4’s next, as yet announced cal­en­dar-appro­pri­ate cel­e­bra­tion of Eliot. They’ve used his work to refresh audi­ences after a trou­bling year; per­haps they’ll use it again to get us through the cru­elest month of this one.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

T.S. Eliot Reads From “The Waste Land,” “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” & “The Hol­low Men”: His Apoc­a­lyp­tic Post WWI Poems

Lis­ten to T.S. Eliot Recite His Late Mas­ter­piece, the Four Quar­tets

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Hear Alec Guin­ness (The Leg­end Behind Obi-Wan Keno­bi) Read T.S. Eliot’s Four Quar­tets & The Waste Land

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Joan Miró-Inspired Animation of Federico García Lorca’s Poem, “Romance Sonámbulo”

in Animation, Art, Poetry | January 9th, 2017

What tod­dler is trans­fixed by a poem of trag­i­cal­ly thwart­ed desire?

Thou­sands of them, thanks to “The Sleep­walk­er,” ani­ma­tor Theodore Ushev’s cre­ative inter­pre­ta­tion of Fed­eri­co Gar­cía Lor­ca’s poem, “Romance Sonám­bu­lo.”

Ushev starts by scrap­ping the words, in favor of a pure­ly visu­al lan­guage that draws heav­i­ly on the work of Lorca’s con­tem­po­rary, sur­re­al­ist painter Joan Miró.

Would Lor­ca have approved?

Pos­si­bly. He had great admi­ra­tion for Miró, whose paint­ings he declared “the purest of all images” in a pub­lic lec­ture on mod­ern art at Grenada’s Athenaeum:

They come from dream, from the cen­ter of the soul, there where love is made flesh and incred­i­ble breezes of dis­tant sounds blow.

Ani­ma­tor Ushev is anoth­er who’s put a lot of stock in dreams:

I want­ed to cre­ate a joy­ful film, that makes the pub­lic hap­py – inex­plic­a­bly hap­py. The sur­re­al­ist move­ment was a play, a game itself. I often start my mas­ter­class­es with the quo­ta­tion, “The life is a dream (and every­thing is a game).” It is a mod­i­fied ver­sion of the roman­tic belief of anoth­er Span­ish writer – Pedro Calderón de la Bar­ca. This lit­tle film can be seen as such – an alle­go­ry over the joy and mys­tery of life.

His take may con­fuse those who’ve been debat­ing the orig­i­nal poem’s far-from-joy­ful mean­ing.

There are rec­og­niz­able forms … Lorca’s “gyp­sy girl,” for instance.

What’s going on?

Ask a tod­dler what’s he or she sees.

A wound­ed con­tra­band run­ner drag­ging him­self back to his for­bid­den lady love?

A grief-strick­en Juli­et throw­ing her­self in a cis­tern?

More like­ly, danc­ing, and lots of it, thanks to the irre­sistible score — Bul­gar­i­an musi­cian Kot­tarashky’s “Opa Hey.”

(Ushev made a con­scious deci­sion to expand the gyp­sy theme beyond Lorca’s native Andalucía to the Balkan region.)

“Romance Sonám­bu­lo”

Green, how I want you green.

Green wind. Green branch­es.

The ship out on the sea

and the horse on the moun­tain. 

With the shade around her waist 

she dreams on her bal­cony, 

green flesh, her hair green, 

with eyes of cold sil­ver. 

Green, how I want you green. 

Under the gyp­sy moon, 

all things are watch­ing her 

and she can­not see them.

Green, how I want you green. 

Big hoar­frost stars 

come with the fish of shad­ow 

that opens the road of dawn. 

The fig tree rubs its wind 

with the sand­pa­per of its branch­es, 

and the for­est, cun­ning cat, 

bris­tles its brit­tle fibers. 

But who will come? And from where? 

She is still on her bal­cony 

green flesh, her hair green, 

dream­ing in the bit­ter sea.

—My friend, I want to trade 

my horse for her house, 

my sad­dle for her mir­ror, 

my knife for her blan­ket. 

My friend, I come bleed­ing 

from the gates of Cabra.

—If it were pos­si­ble, my boy, 

I’d help you fix that trade. 

But now I am not I, 

nor is my house now my house.

—My friend, I want to die

decent­ly in my bed. 

Of iron, if that’s pos­si­ble, 

with blan­kets of fine cham­bray. 

Don’t you see the wound I have 

from my chest up to my throat?

—Your white shirt has grown 

thirsty dark brown ros­es. 

Your blood oozes and flees a

round the cor­ners of your sash. 

But now I am not I, 

nor is my house now my house.

—Let me climb up, at least, 

up to the high bal­conies; 

Let me climb up! Let me, 

up to the green bal­conies. 

Rail­ings of the moon 

through which the water rum­bles.

Now the two friends climb up, 

up to the high bal­conies.

Leav­ing a trail of blood. 

Leav­ing a trail of teardrops. 

Tin bell vines

were trem­bling on the roofs.

A thou­sand crys­tal tam­bourines 

struck at the dawn light.

Green, how I want you green, 

green wind, green branch­es. 

The two friends climbed up. 

The stiff wind left 

in their mouths, a strange taste 

of bile, of mint, and of basil 

My friend, where is she—tell me—

where is your bit­ter girl?

How many times she wait­ed for you! 

How many times would she wait for you, 

cool face, black hair, 

on this green bal­cony! 

Over the mouth of the cis­tern

the gyp­sy girl was swing­ing, 

green flesh, her hair green, 

with eyes of cold sil­ver. 

An ici­cle of moon

holds her up above the water. 

The night became inti­mate 

like a lit­tle plaza.

Drunk­en “Guardias Civiles”

were pound­ing on the door. 

Green, how I want you green. 

Green wind. Green branch­es. 

The ship out on the sea. 

And the horse on the moun­tain.

Read “Romance Sonám­bu­lo” in the orig­i­nal Span­ish here

Read an inter­view with ani­ma­tor Ushev here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith Reads Fed­eri­co Gar­cia Lorca’s “Lit­tle Vien­nese Waltz” in New York City

Hear Jorge Luis Borges Read 30 of His Poems (in the Orig­i­nal Span­ish)

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Two Ita­lo Calvi­no Sto­ries: “The False Grand­moth­er” and “The Dis­tance from the Moon”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Jim Jarmusch Lists His Favorite Poets: Dante, William Carlos Williams, Arthur Rimbaud, John Ashbery & More

in Film, Literature, Poetry | December 30th, 2016

jarmusch-poems

Wiki­me­dia Com­mons pho­to by Chrysoula Artemis

When it comes to Amer­i­can indie direc­tor Jim Jar­musch, we tend to think right away of the impor­tance of music in his films, what with his col­lab­o­ra­tions with Neil Young, Tom Waits, and Iggy Pop. (Jar­musch is him­self a musi­cian who has released two stu­dio albums and three EPs under the moniker Sqürl.) But Jarmusch’s most recent film, Pater­son, is an ode to poet­ry, drawn from his own love of New York School poets like Frank O’Hara and John Ash­bery. Set in Pater­son, New Jer­sey and fea­tur­ing a main char­ac­ter also named Pater­son (Adam Dri­ver), the film aims to show, writes Time mag­a­zine, “how art—maybe even espe­cial­ly art made in the margins—can fill up every­day life.”

Jar­musch was drawn to Pater­son, the town, by William Car­los Williams. The mod­ernist poet called the town home and pub­lished an epic poem called Pater­son in 1946. Although that dense, com­plex work is “not one of my favorite poems,” Jar­musch tells Time, he namechecks Williams as one of his favorite poets.

I think we can see the influ­ence of Williams’ spare visu­al imag­i­na­tion in Jar­musch films like Stranger than Par­adise, Down by Law, Ghost Dog, and Bro­ken Flow­ers. Jar­musch goes on in the course of his dis­cus­sion about Pater­son, the film, to name a hand­ful of oth­er poets he counts as inspi­ra­tions. In the list below, you can find Jarmusch’s favorites, along with links to some of their most-beloved poems.

–William Car­los Williams (“Aspho­del, That Gree­ny Flower,” “4th of July”)
–Wal­lace Stevens (“The Man with the Blue Gui­tar,” “The Snow Man,” “Thir­teen Ways of Look­ing at a Black­bird”)
–Dante Alighieri (Can­to I of the Infer­no)
–Arthur Rim­baud (“The Drunk­en Boat,” “Vagabonds”)
–John Ash­bery (“Self-Por­trait in a Con­vex Mirror”—read by Ash­bery)
–Ken­neth Koch (“In Love With You,” “One Train May Hide Anoth­er”)
–Frank O’Hara (“Steps,” Var­i­ous Poems)

As we read or re-read these poets, we might ask how they have informed Jar­musch’s styl­ish films in addi­tion to the influ­ence of his cin­e­mat­ic favorites. Sev­er­al great direc­tors have con­tributed to his pecu­liar visu­al aes­thet­ic. The only film­mak­er he men­tions as a hero in his Time inter­view is Bernar­do Bertol­luc­ci, but you can read about Jar­musch’s top ten films at our pre­vi­ous post–films direct­ed by such lumi­nar­ies as Yasu­jiro Ozu, Nicholas Ray, and Robert Bres­son.

via Austen Kleon’s week­ly newslet­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim Jarmusch’s 10 Favorite Films: Ozu’s Tokyo Sto­ry, Kurosawa’s Sev­en Samu­rai and Oth­er Black & White Clas­sics

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

Wern­er Her­zog Cre­ates Required Read­ing & Movie View­ing Lists for Enrolling in His Film School

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear Jorge Luis Borges Read 30 of His Poems (in the Original Spanish)

in Literature, Poetry | December 23rd, 2016

In a recent post on the math­e­mat­i­cal-mind­ed Dutch graph­ic artist M.C. Esch­er, Col­in Mar­shall referred to David Auer­bach’s short “Inquest on Left-Brained Lit­er­a­ture.” Here, Auer­bach sit­u­ates Jorge Luis Borges among writ­ers like Richard Pow­ers, Umber­to Eco, David Mitchell, Haru­ki Muraka­mi and oth­ers, who exist “on a par­al­lel track of lit­er­a­ture that is pop­u­lar specif­i­cal­ly among engi­neers.” From his obser­va­tions, Auer­bach draws only “one obvi­ous con­clu­sion… that engi­neers tend to like nov­el­ists that deal in math and sci­ence mate­r­i­al.”

Auerbach’s list seems legit­i­mate (he men­tions “anoth­er schol­ar who also works amongst engi­neers” and who “pro­duced near-dupli­ca­tion of this list”). But it prompts one impor­tant ques­tion for me: How do these writ­ers see them­selves? As pri­mar­i­ly lit­er­ary authors? Genre writ­ers? Engi­neers them­selves, of a sort?

In the case of Borges, we have an elo­quent self-descrip­tion from the author in his intro­duc­tion to the Select­ed Poems 1923–1967. “First and fore­most,” writes Borges, “I think of myself as a read­er, then as a poet, then as a prose writer.”

While Borges may hold tremen­dous appeal for left-brain thinkers like pro­gram­mer Jamie Zaw­in­s­ki, he began his career as a very right-brained poet, and con­tin­ued to see his work as pri­mar­i­ly “addressed to the imag­i­na­tion” rather than “to the rea­son.”

I can­not say whether my work is poet­ry or not; I can only say that my appeal is to the imag­i­na­tion. I am not a thinker. I am mere­ly a man who has tried to explore the lit­er­ary pos­si­bil­i­ties of meta­physics and of reli­gion.

Borges is inor­di­nate­ly mod­est. His work is poet­ry, espe­cial­ly, of course, his actu­al poetry—volumes of it, writ­ten over six decades of his life— from his first pub­lished col­lec­tion in 1923, Fer­vor de Buenos Aires, to his last, Los con­ju­ra­dos in 1985. It has always seemed to me some­thing of a tragedy that Borges is not bet­ter-known as a poet among his Eng­lish-speak­ing read­ers. It’s not for lack of excel­lent trans­la­tions, most of them guid­ed by the mul­ti-lin­gual Borges him­self.

The sit­u­a­tion is much dif­fer­ent, in my expe­ri­ence, among Span­ish-speak­ers. There is indeed a Latin-American—and specif­i­cal­ly Argentine—resonance in some of Borges’ verse that is impos­si­ble to trans­late. For those who can appre­ci­ate Borges in his orig­i­nal lan­guage, we bring you the album above, 30 poems read by the author him­self. You can hear one of those read­ings, “Arte Poet­i­ca,” in the video at the top of the post, with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles. The direc­tor, Neels Castil­lon, describes the short film as “a jour­ney around Argenti­na and Uruguay to illus­trate words of Jorge Luis Borges.”

Eng­lish speak­ers can also sam­ple trans­la­tions of Borges’ poet­ry here and here. Or dive into the trans­la­tion of “Arte Poet­i­ca,” or “The Art of Poet­ry” here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Enchant­i­ng Jorge Luis Borges Read “The Art of Poet­ry”

Jorge Luis Borges’ 1967–8 Nor­ton Lec­tures On Poet­ry (And Every­thing Else Lit­er­ary)

Borges Explains The Task of Art

What Does Jorge Luis Borges’ “Library of Babel” Look Like? An Accu­rate Illus­tra­tion Cre­at­ed with 3D Mod­el­ing Soft­ware

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear “Twas The Night Before Christmas” Read by Stephen Fry & John Cleese

in Audio Books, Poetry | December 21st, 2016

You have to hand it to the Eng­lish: they know how to do Christ­mas right. Maybe it has to do with their respect for tra­di­tion, maybe with their sense of occa­sion, maybe with their apti­tude for pageantry, and maybe with their com­pul­sion, for all that, not to take any­thing too seri­ous­ly. It helps that they also pro­duce per­form­ers of the high­est cal­iber, espe­cial­ly of the ora­tor­i­cal vari­ety: Mon­ty Python’s John Cleese, for instance, or man of let­ters and all-around enter­tain­ing per­son­al­i­ty Stephen Fry. And so today, with its tit­u­lar eve near­ly here, we give you both of those Eng­lish­men’s ren­di­tions of “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christ­mas.”

Fry’s read­ing at the top of the post, which comes with orches­tral back­ing, adheres close­ly to Clement Clarke Moore’s orig­i­nal 1823 text. The poem, for those who’ve nev­er spent Christ­mas in an Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­try, tells of a father awak­ened in the mid­dle of the night by none oth­er than San­ta Claus, come to deliv­er his fam­i­ly’s presents. More recent­ly, Fry nar­rat­ed anoth­er sto­ry of San­ta Claus in “San­ta For­got,” an ani­mat­ed pro­mo­tion­al video for Alzheimer’s Research UK that uses the beloved fig­ure glimpsed so vivid­ly in Moore’s poem to raise aware­ness of demen­tia and the research ded­i­cat­ed to cur­ing it.

In his read­ing of “ ‘Twas The Night Before Christ­mas” just above, John Cleese mod­ern­izes the sto­ry, freight­ing it with ref­er­ences to safe­ty belts, flat-screen tele­vi­sions, and Apple com­put­ers — and end­ing with San­ta Claus cap­tured by the father: “So he now lives with us, locked up in the cel­lar. We go down each day to see the old fel­low and get our new presents. And we ate the rein­deer, so we’re sor­ry but Christ­mas is can­celed next year.” Cleese has a ten­den­cy to dis­play such irrev­er­ence to the hol­i­day. “So sad to see u end with a tirade against Christ­mas,” tweet­ed some­one who’d attend­ed a live show of his and Eric Idle’s last month in Ari­zona. “Not against Christ­mas,” Cleese fired back, “against its com­mer­cial exploita­tion. Big dif­fer­ence, which the rest of the audi­ence under­stood.”

Noth­ing like a brac­ing shot of Eng­lish wit to treat an over­dose of com­mer­cial­ism, espe­cial­ly of the pow­er­ful Amer­i­can vari­ety. But for all the mas­tery of Christ­mas on the oth­er side of the pond, Clarke Moore, an Amer­i­can, defined the very char­ac­ter of San­ta Claus in the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion — a spry old gen­tle­man with rose-like cheeks and a cher­ry-line nose, a beard “as white as the snow,” and “a lit­tle round bel­ly that shook when he laughed, like a bowl­ful of jel­ly.” “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christ­mas,” orig­i­nal­ly titled “A Vis­it from Saint Nicholas,” remains quite pos­si­bly the best-known poem ever writ­ten by an Amer­i­can. But wher­ev­er in the world one reads them, San­ta Claus’ final words, and the poem’s, still res­onate: “Hap­py Christ­mas to all, and to all a good-night!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan Lee Reads “The Night Before Christ­mas,” Telling the Tale of San­ta Claus, the Great­est of Super Heroes

Bob Dylan Reads “‘Twas the Night Before Christ­mas” On His Hol­i­day Radio Show (2006)

“Wern­er Her­zog” Reads ‘Twas The Night Before Christ­mas”

Impres­sion­ist Reads ‘Twas The Night Before Christ­mas in Celebri­ty Voic­es

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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