Anne Carson, Nay Rather

A recent addition to The Cahiers Series

From The Cahiers Series:

Nay Rather unites two texts by celebrated Canadian poet Anne Carson, encouraging readers to experience them alongside and illuminating each other. ‘Variations on the Right to Remain Silent’ is an essay on the stakes involved when translation happens, ranging from Homer through Joan of Arc to Paul Celan; it includes the author’s seven translations of a poetic fragment from the Greek poet Ibykos. ‘By Chance the Cycladic People’ is a poem about Cycladic culture where the order of the lines has been determined by a random number generator. The cahier is illustrated by Lanfranco Quadrio drawings and gouaches, inspired by his reading of Anne Carson’s texts. [Read More]

Find on Amazon: US | UK

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• TLS reviews The Cahiers Series
• Praise for The Cahiers Series
• László Krasznahorkai and Max Neumann, Animalinside
• George Craig, Writing Beckett's Letters
• Paul Celan Reads Japanese

Paul Celan Reads Japanese

An article from The White Review

Paul Celan

From Yoko Tawada (The White Review), translated by Susan Bernofsky:

There were exceptions, though, such as the poems of Paul Celan, which I found utterly fascinating even in Japanese translation. From time to time it occurred to me to wonder whether his poems might not be lacking in quality since they were translatable. When I ask about a work’s ‘translatability,’ I don’t mean whether a perfect copy of a poem can exist in a foreign language, but whether its translation can itself be a work of literature. Besides, it would be insufficient if I were to say that Celan’s poems were translatable. Rather, I had the feeling that they were peering into Japanese.

After I had learned to read German literature in the original, I realised that my impression hadn’t been illusory. I was occupied even more than before by the question of why Celan’s poems were able to reach another world that lay outside the German language. There must be a chasm between languages into which all words tumble. [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Samuel Beckett and Paul Celan
• Translating Paul Celan's The Meridian
• Collecting Paul Celan
• Paul Celan, The Meridian: Final Version—Drafts—Materials
• Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs: Correspondence

Gisèle Freund: Writer Portraits

An online gallery of prominent twentieth-century authors and poets

Hermann Hesse, Montagnlia, 1962

James Joyce with grandson, Paris, 1938.

Walter Benjamin, Paris, 1938

Virginia Woolf smoking, London, 1939

T. S. Eliot, London, 1939

Victoria Ocampo, Paris, 1939

Stefan Zweig, 1939

Samuel Beckett, Paris, 1964

Iris Murdoch, Oxford, 1959

Marcel Duchamp, Paris, 1939

Marguerite Duras, Paris, 1965

André Malraux, Paris, 1935

Paul Celan, 1970

Sylvia Beach, Paris, 1938

You can find more writer portraits on Gisèle Freund's official website [See More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Photographs of Maurice Blanchot
• Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg
• Man Ray: Photographs of Virginia Woolf
• Ludwig Wittgenstein's Photography
• Susan Sontag, On Photography
• John Minihan on Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett and Paul Celan

George Hunka on John Felstiner's essay, 'Paul Celan Meets Samuel Beckett'

Paul Celan (left) and Samuel Beckett (right)

From Superfluities Redux: ‘According to John Felstiner, Theodor Adorno considered Paul Celan “the only authentic postwar writer to stand with Samuel Beckett.” (Adorno, Beckett, Celan: there’s the beginning of an alphabestiary to contend with.) Along with Adorno’s high regard, Beckett and Celan also shared Paris as their home for most of their adult lives, but surprisingly their paths never crossed. In the 2004 essay “Paul Celan Meets Samuel Beckett,” Felstiner describes the writers’ shared concerns, which become even more obvious as the years go by [...]’ [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Samuel Beckett
• Translating Paul Celan's The Meridian
• Collecting Paul Celan
• Paul Celan, The Meridian: Final Version—Drafts—Materials
• Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs: Correspondence

Translating Paul Celan's The Meridian

Leonard Schwartz talks to Celan translator Pierre Joris

Paul Celan, The Meridian

Pierre Joris discusses his translation strategy in Paul Celan’s The Meridian: Final Version — Drafts — Materials, published by Stanford University Press (link via Nomadics) [Listen]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Paul Celan, The Meridian: Final Version—Drafts—Materials
• Collecting Paul Celan

That Other Word: Episode 2

A free online podcast discussing literature and translation

An announcement from That Other Word:

That Other Word is a podcast run jointly by Daniel Medin (Center for Writers and Translators, Paris) and Scott Esposito (Center for the Art of Translation, San Francisco).

Each episode features a discussion between Daniel and Scott on recent noteworthy literature in translation, and then an in-depth interview with writers, translators, editors, and publishers. The podcast hopes to celebrate and explore various and under-appreciated aspects of translation, not only into and out of English, but other languages as well.

In this episode, Scott Esposito eagerly anticipates the Dirty War in Sergio Chejfec’s The Planets, and Daniel Medin shares a delightful description of a freeloader from Nescio’s Amsterdam Stories. They discuss Daniel Sada’s Almost Never and the general robustness of contemporary Mexican fiction, attempt to explain why reading Can Xue’s Vertical Motion is like running downhill in the dark, then hesitate over whether to call Daniel Levin Becker’s Many Subtle Channels a memoir or a work of criticism, but agree that it is about Oulipo and very candid.

Daniel Medin then speaks to Petra Hardt, head of the rights department at Suhrkamp Verlag and author of Rights: Buying. Protecting. Selling. Suhrkamp is one of the most prestigious presses in Germany and in Europe, and since its founding in 1950 has published not only many of the greatest German-language writers of the twentieth century — among them Paul Celan, Theodor W. Adorno, and Thomas Bernhard — but foreign authors as well, including Samuel Beckett, Marcel Proust, and Julio Cortázar. In a series of wonderfully engaging anecdotes, Petra describes her work in rights and foreign rights, how that work is changing in the digital age, and why her book is intended for new presses in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.

That Other Word is available on iTunes (along with the Center for the Art of Translation’s other audio programs) here. Episode 1 has gone over very well and we’re hoping to reach even more listeners this time. We’ll be promoting the podcast throughout this next week via Facebook and Twitter, and we hope you’ll help us spread the word. (And in return, just give us a shout if you’d like us to help spread the word about other related projects!)

In the meantime, happy listening, and stay tuned for episode 3, airing next month and featuring an interview with Benjamin Moser, translator and author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector.

Podcast

Listen to Episode 2 on That Other Word website.

Links

The American University of Paris: Center for Writers and Translators
Center for Writers and Translators: Facebook
Center for Writers and Translators: Twitter

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• That Other Word: Free Literature Podcast
• Praise for The Cahiers Series
• László Krasznahorkai and Max Neumann, Animalinside
• Sylph Editions at Edinburgh International Book Festival 2011
• George Craig, Writing Beckett's Letters

Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs: Correspondence

Mark Thwaite on Celan and the demands of reading

Photograph: Source

Mark Thwaite writes about poet and Holocaust survivor Paul Celan in light of Carcanet's Correspondence between Celan and Nelly Sachs (link via Ready Steady Book): 'Celan's words are limpid, but appear so only if we adjust our expectations, allow his words to adjust our expectations: only if we are prepared to listen. Celan’s exactness clashes with what we think of as exact: the everyday is not exact, it is a cliché; realism requires vertiginous originality. But how can one be exact about what is truly unspeakable? One can only write knowing that one approaches and approximates, and that language fails you the while; you run after exactness, but the world gets away and your words fail. Beckett taught us about this failure because he knew failure and writing were synonymous.' [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Paul Celan, The Meridian: Final Version—Drafts—Materials
• Collecting Paul Celan

Paul Celan, The Meridian: Final Version—Drafts—Materials

A new volume from Stanford University Press

Stephen Mitchelmore reviews The Meridian over at This Space, a speech delivered by Paul Celan on receiving the Georg Büchner Prize for literature. The volume is published by Stanford University Press, and includes drafts and materials alongside the final version of the text. [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Collecting Paul Celan

Collecting Paul Celan

An illustrated online bibliography

Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan

Stephen Mitchelmore has drawn my attention to a recent post at Jack Ross' blog, The Imaginary Museum. The post presents Ross' personal list 'of the most useful materials by and about Celan available at present to any reasonably enterprising English-speaking reader.' And quite a list it is, too. [Read More]

Shane Weller, Modernism and Nihilism

New study explores connections between two influential Western traditions

Shane Weller,  Modernism and Nihilism
(Palgrave MacMillan, 2011)

Happy to note an interesting new work from Shane Weller, exploring literary and philosophical intersections between modernism and nihilism.

Summary

At the heart of some of the most influential strands of philosophical, political, and aesthetic modernism lies the conviction that modernity is fundamentally nihilistic. This book offers a wide-ranging critical history of the concept of nihilism from its origins in French Revolutionary discourse to its place in recent theorizations of the postmodern. Key moments in that history include the concept’s appropriation by political activists in mid-nineteenth-century Russia, by Nietzsche in the 1880s, by the European avant-garde and ‘high’ modernists in the early decades of the twentieth century, by conservative revolutionaries in Germany in the interwar years, and by major theorists in the post-Holocaust period. Focusing in particular on the abiding impact of Nietzsche’s claim that art is the ‘only superior counterforce’ to nihilism, I argue that an understanding of modernism (and, indeed, of postmodernism) is impossible without a reflection upon the decisive role played by the concept of nihilism therein.

Read more: Palgrave MacMillan website

About the Author

Shane Weller is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Kent. His research interests lie in the field of modern European literature, especially the works of Samuel Beckett, Thomas Bernhard, Maurice Blanchot, Paul Celan, Franz Kafka, and W. G. Sebald. He has published books on Beckett, on literature and ethics, and on literature and nihilism, plus essays on a range of writers and theorists, including Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Friedrich Hölderlin, Wyndham Lewis, and Sylvia Plath. Weller is also co-director of the Centre for Modern European Literature at Kent, and a member of the executive committee of the British Comparative Literature Association.

Read more: Shane Weller, Staff profile, University of Kent

Publisher

Palgrave Macmillan website: Shane Weller, Modernism and Nihilism (2011)


Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Samuel Beckett
• Samuel Beckett: Debts and Legacies 2011
• A Companion to Samuel Beckett
• Samuel Beckett Summer School: July 2011

Disjecta: This week's links

Your guide to this week's best cultural links

Joy Division, 'She's Lost Control'/'Atmosphere' single. Art direction: Peter Saville.

Literature:

100 Notable Books of 2010: An annual round-up from the New York Times

Margaret Atwood: 'Human creativity is not confined to just a few areas of life. The techno-scientific world has some of the most creative people you'll ever meet.'
Robert McCrum interviews Atwood in The Observer

Irish Company: James Joyce and Samuel Beckett: Friedhelm Rathjen embarks on a cycling tour of Ireland in search of his literary heroes

James Joyce's burnt kidney breakfast: A selection of quotations from Ulysses, compiled by Biblioklept.

William S. Burroughs: Dangerous Minds compiles a number of biographical sources on Burroughs' collaboration with Nirvana frontman, Kurt Cobain

Saul Bellow: 'Of course, readers of Bellow will plunge into these letters eager to trace the making of a writer, and in this they will not be disappointed.' John Banville reviews Saul Bellow's Letters in The Observer

Philip K. Dick: A map of Philip K. Dick's Hugo Award-winning The Man in the High Castle

Norman Mailer: The New York Times profiles Norris Church Mailer, 'artist and ally' of the American novelist, who passed away recently

Paul Celan: Ian Pindar celebrates the German poet on what would have been his 90th birthday

Patti Smith: Musician reflects on winning National Book Award for Just Kids, a non-fiction work based on her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe

Tom Waits: The Guardian reports that the American musician is planning to publish a collection of his poetry. Hard Ground will be published by University of Texas Press in March 2011.

Philosophy & Critical Theory:

Assuming Gender: This year's annual lecture is by Professor Mandy Merck, entitled 'The Question of Caster Semenya: Gender and the Level Playing Field'. 01 December from 4.30 at Cardiff University. Free to attend.

Noam Chomsky: Chomsky is due to speak at Cardiff University on 11 March 2011. More details to be confirmed.

Theatre:

Samuel Beckett: The Guardian reviews Michael Lawrence's production, Krapp, 39, inspired by Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape

Franz Kafka: Two British comedians, Tom Basden and Tim Key, star in Joseph K., a darkly comic adaptation of Kafka's The Trial

Music

David Bowie: BBC's 1975 Omnibus documentary, Cracked Actor, available online

Joy Division: Peter Saville and Studio Parris Wakefield's beautiful design work for the Joy Division back catalogue

Thank you to all link contributions, which can be found on the A Piece of Monologue Twitter page.

Disjecta: This week's links

Your guide to this week's best cultural links

Philip Roth. Photograph: Steve Pyke.

Literature:

Samuel Beckett: The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 2, 1941–1956 will be published by Cambridge University Press in August 2011
Samuel Beckett: Lois Overbeck to speak at the Samuel Beckett: Out of the Archive conference in York, June 2011
James Joyce: This week, Frank DeLaney's podcast readings of Ulysses find Stephen discussing Shakespeare's Hamlet
Joseph Conrad: 3:AM Magazine reviews graphic novel adaptation of Heart of Darkness
Philip Roth: Elaine Showalter compares Roth's new novel, Nemesis, with Albert Camus' The Plague
Philip Roth: Nemesis gets The Complete Review treatment
Tom McCarthy: Jen Craig reads C, and asks whether McCarthy really is a modernist writer
Paul Celan: Translating Celan Conference, London, 23 November 2010
William S. Burroughs: Oliver Harris on re-editing the first trilogy (Junky, Queer, The Yage Letters)
Harvard University Press: Spring Catalogue 2011
HTML Giant launches literary magazine club
Indie Literary Sites start coming of age
Spike Magazine: The Book (Free PDF download)

Philosophy & Critical Theory:

History of Philosophy Podcast: Based at King's College, London
Socrates - a man for our times

Film:

Werner Herzog: A selection of documentaries to be shown at DocNYC.
Werner Herzog: The Guardian's Jonathan Jones on Herzog as performance artist
Blade Runner: The Guardian profiles Ridley Scott's science fiction masterpiece as part of its ongoing film season

Etc.

Melvyn Bragg: Discussions from radio programme In Our Time published in a new collection

Thank you to all link contributors, who can be found on the A Piece of Monologue Twitter page.

Disjecta: This week's links

Your guide to this week's best cultural links

Saul Bellow, Letters

Literature:

Will Self: This month's Featured Artist on A Piece of Monologue
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Goethe's Light
Paul Celan: Stephen Mitchelmore on the Bachmann/Celan correspondence
Saul Bellow: Letters, to be published 04 November 2010
J. M. Coetzee: Nobel Prize Lecture
10 Classic Stories of Suburban Ennui
Bret Easton Ellis: Interview with AskMen
Apocalypse in Literature and Film
Chick Lit: NPR discusses the genre
Thomas Bernhard: A guide to the complete English translations of Thomas Bernhard
Thomas Bernhard/Thomas Mann
Barney Rosset: Obscene, a documentary on Rosset and Grove Press
Paul Auster: An excerpt from Auster's forthcoming novel, Sunset Park

Philosophy & Critical Theory:

Samuel Beckett: Online academic journal sends call for papers on Beckett and cliché
Sigmund Freud: One-day conference at the Anna Freud Centre: Psychoanalysis and Surrealism in the digital age
David Lynch: Video footage now available of the Mapping the Lost Highway Conference

Theatre

Thomas Bernhard: Canadian production of Ritter, Dene, Voss

Film & Television:

David Lynch: Video footage now available of the Mapping the Lost Highway Conference
Twin Peaks Weekender: 30 hour marathon of every episode at Battersea Arts Centre, London
Watch Chris Petit's Radio On free online
Barney Rosset: Obscene, a documentary on Rosset and Grove Press

Art, Design & Photography:

Stanley Donwood: San Francisco exhibition, 2010
Caspar David Friedrich: A short extract from Joseph Leo Koerner's The Subject of Landscape
40+ Stunning Minimalist Book Covers
Vincent van Gogh: Painting recovered after being stolen from Cairo museum
Visual Editions

Etc.

Will Self: Bigness and Littleness

Thank you to all link contributors, who can be found on the A Piece of Monologue Twitter page.

Disjecta: This week's links

Paula Rego, 'The Policeman's Daughter', 1987

Literature:

Paul Celan: On Celan's correspondence with Ingeborg Bachmann
Bret Easton Ellis: Mark Lawson reviews Less Than Zero sequel, Imperial Bedrooms
Samuel Beckett Summer School 2011
Samuel Beckett: Excerpt from Mercier and Camier
Samuel Beckett: French World Cup coach Raymond Domenech is a Beckett fan
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the creeping man
Shakespeare & Co.: A collection of links
Joyce Carol Oates: On trauma and adolescence
F. Scott Fitzgerald: Obituary from 1940
William Faukner: Signed collection sold at auction
Lee Rourke: Interview discussing the release of his debut novel, The Canal
Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Moscow murals deemed 'depressing' and 'inappropriate'
William S. Burroughs: Burroughs executor James Grauerholz discusses the life and work
Will Self: On the growing gap between what is written and what is read
Françoise Sagan: A brief biography
The Critical Sphere: A new literary blog

Philosophy:

Arthur Schopenhauer: A Guide for the Perplexed
Jean-Paul Sartre: A brief biography

Theatre:

Shakespeare in Cardiff
Shakespearian Summer

Music

Patti Smith: Joseph Connor on the American poet and singer

Film & Television:

Larry David: The Guardian interviews Larry David on Woody Allen's Whatever Works
Jean-Luc Godard: Jason Solomons on the 50th anniversary of Breathless
David Lynch and Werner Herzog: Jeremy Kay on the collaboration, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?
David Lynch: Peter Wild on the cancellation of popular television shows, such as Twin Peaks
David Lynch: On detectives
Samuel Beckett: Alan Schneider on Samuel Beckett's Film

Art:

Caravaggio: A life sacred and profane
Tetsuya Ishida: Kafkaesque paintings
Paula Rego: Germaine Greer on artists made dames

Thank you to all link contributors, who can be found on the A Piece of Monologue Twitter page.

Disjecta: This week's links

There are plenty of links to Samuel Beckett news and multimedia this week, including a profile of his close friend and romantic partner Barbara Bray, and articles exploring Beckett's work and the problematic tagline 'theatre of the absurd'. There's also a retrospective post on European poet Paul Celan, published by Nomadics, a piece on German critic Walter Benjamin, and news that actor Dennis Hopper is to receive an art retrospective.

Literature:

Samuel Beckett: The Telegraph profiles translator, critic and Beckett confidant Barbara Bray
Samuel Beckett: Michael Foley's Top Ten Absurd Classics
Samuel Beckett: This Space discusses Beckett's rejection of 'Absurdist' label
Samuel Beckett on holiday
Samuel Beckett: Barry Schwabsky reviews Faber's recent edition of the Collected Poems
J. G. Ballard: The Guardian's John Crace digests Ballard's Crash
Paul Celan: Nomadics profiles the distinguished Jewish poet
Marcel Proust: Collecting Proust in the new millennium
UK Literary Festivals: Event calendar

Philosophy & Critical Theory:

Walter Benjamin: In Extremis

Film:

Dennis Hopper: Hollywood actor and director to receive art retrospective

Theatre:

Samuel Beckett: Radio plays Cascando and Words and Music available online
Heiner Goebbels: I Went To The House But Did Not Enter at the Barbican in London
William Shakespeare: Prefaces to Shakespeare

Etc.:

Coffee Breakdown: A new comic strip.

Thank you to all link contributors, who can be found on the
A Piece of Monologue Twitter page.

Disjecta: This week's links

Penguin Classic (RED) edition of Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground

This week, Vintage claim the rights to a fourth novel in the Gormenghast series, Titus Awakes. 3:AM Magazine reports that Iain Sinclair will be talking at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (the city of disappearances). Lee Rourke announces publication of his debut novel, The Canal. And Mark Lawson reviews the status of the Great American Novelist for The Guardian. As if that wasn't enough, Bob Dylan is set to release a children's book; comedian Stewart Lee to publish a memoir; and Beckett's Waiting for Godot breaks box office records at the Haymarket Theatre in London.

Literature:

J. D. Salinger: Widow thanks neighbours for maintaining privacy
Iain Sinclair: Upcoming talk at the ICA
Shane Jones: Lee Rourke shares his thoughts on Jones' work
Mervyn Peake: Vintage buys rights to Gormenghast sequel, Titus Awakes
Lee Rourke: Lee Rourke's new novel, The Canal
Franz Kafka: This month's featured artist on A Piece of Monologue
Bob Dylan: New children's book, Man Gave Names to All the Animals
Irish Writers' Centre: IWC has been refused arts funding
Masters of American Literature: Lawson on Salinger, Roth, Morrison, and others.
Paul Celan: On Under the Dome: Walks with Paul Celan
European Literature in Translation: Discussion with Aleksandar Hemon and Anthea Bell
On Defacing Books
Penguin Classics (RED): New editions published for AIDS relief charity

Philosophy & Critical Theory:

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Conference,' Rational Agency as Ethical Life'

David Shields: Stephen Mitchelmore reviews Reality Hunger

Gender and Difference: Academic Conference, May 2010

Music:

Jazz: Ask Sonny Rollins
Jazz: New interview with Dave Brubeck

Film:

Academy Awards Nominations 2010

Theatre:

Samuel Beckett: The success of London Haymarket's Waiting for Godot

Art:

Kieron Williamson: The boy who paints like an old master
Banksy: Anindya Raychaudhuri on Banksy and graffiti-art

Etc.:

Stewart Lee: New book, How I Escaped My Certain Death: The Lives and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian
Cookie Crumbs: This month's links from Critical Cookie

Thank you to all link contributors, who can be found on the A Piece of Monologue Twitter page.

Disjecta: This week's links

(Image: Paul Buckley's design for the 25th Anniversary edition of Don DeLillo's White Noise)

A number of interesting articles and reviews in this week's selection. Jonathan Jones speculates on the degeneration of Philip Roth's artistic powers, Will Self meets The Road director John Hillcoat, and Joyce Carol Oates takes time out of her busy schedule to answer questions. There's also a link to Žižek's recent appearance on The Today Programme, a review of Celan's correspondence, and fifteen things you may or may not already know about coffee.

Literature:

Philip Roth: Jonathan Jones on The Humbling and Roth's late career
Don DeLillo: Celebrating the 25th anniversary of White Noise
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Writer's son his father's rejects 'Old Testament' image
Paul Celan: Benjamin Ivry on Celan's Letters
J. M. Coetzee: The New Yorker briefly reviews Coetzee's Summertime
Philip K. Dick: Controversy grows over Google's Android/Nexus product line
Joyce Carol Oates: Questions and Answers

Philosophy & Critical Theory:

Slavoj Žižek: Žižek appears on BBC Radio 4's The Today Programme
Feminism: The Guardian reviews 'the feminist year ahead'

Music:

Jazz: Miles Davis' b-flat trumpet, on display in LA's Grammy Museum
Stewart Lee: Lee chooses his top musical influences
Samuel Beckett: Morton Feldman's Neither, words by Samuel Beckett

Film:

DVDs of 2009: Sight and Sound Magazine's top picks
Disney: Racial and gender stereotypes in Disney animations
Will Self: Self meets John Hillcoat, director of The Road

Television:

The Wire: A profile of the career of Michael K. Williams, The Wire's Omar Little
Mad Men: Life lessons from a Mad Men art assistant

Art:

The art of Henri Privat-Livemont

Etc.:

The Onion: Front pages 1988-2008
Cardiff Arcades Project
Coffee: Fifteen Things Worth Knowing About Coffee