Exploring the Classics
Chronicle of a Book Group
Over the last two decades I’ve led or taken part in a number of book discussion groups. Some have dealt with radical texts, others have explored various literary works. These two types of groups involve rather different aims and attitudes, but I think they also complement each other. The first type focuses on radical tactics and strategy — how we might better understand and transform the absurd socio-economic system in which we find ourselves. The second is more leisurely and open-ended — exploring imaginative works that enliven and potentially illuminate our lives in general.
But precisely because they deal with the basic archetypes of human experience, these latter works often turn out to be surprisingly relevant to present-day issues. They continue to engage us because they address the perennial life issues that we all face in one way or another. They give us a better sense of the varieties and potentialities of human experience, from the sublime to the ridiculous. They raise difficult questions rather than offering easy answers. And contrary to popular misconception, they are also among the most entertaining books ever written; if they weren’t, they wouldn’t have continued to be eagerly read and reread by countless people over the centuries.
Since January 2016 I’ve led a group called “Exploring the Classics.” Until March 2020 it was hosted by University Press Bookstore in Berkeley. Following a short hiatus at the beginning of the pandemic, the group resumed in July 2020 via Zoom, and will probably continue that way indefinitely. Although we miss the previous in-person conviviality, we would miss even more the many new friends in other parts of the country and even in other countries whose participation Zoom has made possible.
Since September 2023 I’ve also been leading another Zoom group called “Exploring the Situationists.” Because of the different nature of the material and the larger number of interested people around the world, I have recorded all the sessions of this group and posted them on YouTube. This has in turn caused me to structure the meetings somewhat differently. The Classics group discussions are usually pretty freewheeling, and it doesn’t matter too much if some of the participants occasionally go off on a tangent. But the fact that hundreds and perhaps eventually thousands of people will be viewing the recordings of the Situationist sessions in years to come makes it more important to keep the discussion focused. So I’ve organized the series more like a webinar, in which I make introductory remarks and comments on the texts, followed by Q&A. The group has gone through all of the Situationist International Anthology and is about to finish my annotated translation of Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle. You can see the video recordings of the previous Zoom sessions of this group here.
These two groups meet on alternating Sundays, 5:00-7:00 p.m. Pacific Time, and both are free. Let me know if you’d like to take part in either of them.
I won’t have much more to say here about the Situationist series since you can view all the past sessions for yourself. This webpage is about the Exploring the Classics sessions, which (with two exceptions) have not been recorded.
Below are the previous readings of the group and the tentative upcoming schedule (with number of meetings in brackets). The links go to the first significant mention of the text (usually the email where I initially announce the work and briefly describe it).
EXPLORING THE CLASSICS
2016
Cervantes, Don Quixote [12]
Montaigne, Selected Essays [10]
2017
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel [6]
Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress [4]
Swift, Gulliver’s Travels [4]
Madame de Lafayette, The Princesse de Clèves [4]
Defoe, Moll Flanders [4]
2018
Fielding, Tom Jones [7]
Sterne, Tristram Shandy [7]
Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist and His Master [4]
Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (abridged) + Selected
Writings by Johnson [7]
2019
Stendhal, The Red and the Black [5]
Balzac, Lost Illusions [6]
Flaubert, Madame Bovary [5]
Marx, Writings on the French Revolution of 1848 [4]
Blake, Selected Poems [4]
2020
Whitman, Selected Poems [4]
Baudelaire, Selected Poems [1]
[Meetings were suspended mid-March through June, then resumed via Zoom.]
Baudelaire, Selected Poems [4]
Rimbaud, Selected Poems + A Season in Hell [4]
French Poets 1850-1950 [5]
2021
French Songs 1800-2000 [10] [These sessions were
recorded.]
Ford Madox Ford, Parade’s End [8]
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook [5]
The Epic of Gilgamesh [2]
2022
Bhagavad Gita [2]
Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught [2]
Tao Te Ching [2]
Chuang Tzu [2]
Paul
Reps and Nyogen Senzaki, 101 Zen Stories [2]
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind [2}
Classic Chinese Poetry [4]
Basho, Selected Haikus + Narrow Road to the Interior [4]
Women Poets of Japan and China [2]
Tsao Hsueh-chin, The Dream of the Red Chamber (abridged) [3]
2023
Sappho, Poems [2]
Poems from The Greek Anthology [1]
Greek Drama [7]
Herodotus, The Persian Wars [6]
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (excerpts) [1]
Petronius, The Satyricon [2]
Apuleius, The Golden Ass [2]
Arabian Nights [3]
2024
The Kalevala [3]
Njal’s Saga [3]
Paul Radin, Primitive Man as Philosopher [2]
Paul Radin & James Johnson Sweeney (eds.), African Folktales and Sculpture [2]
Jaime de Angulo, Indian Tales [2]
Theodora Kroeber, Ishi in Two Worlds [1]
Kenneth Rexroth (ed.), The Poetry of Preliterate Peoples (unpublished
anthology) [3]
Shakespeare, Songs from the Plays [1]
Robert Burns, Selected Songs [2]
British Traditional Ballads [2]
American Folksongs and Blues [5] [These
sessions are being recorded.]
2025
. . . .
With the exception of the French Songs series in 2021 and the American
Folksongs and Blues series in 2024, I haven’t recorded any
of the above sessions, though it would have been easy enough to do this once we were on Zoom.
I felt that if the participants knew their remarks were being recorded
for posterity it would inhibit the discussion. And in any case,
interesting as the discussions often were for the participants, I
doubted if many other people would be all that interested in listening
to them.
Nevertheless, from time to time people have said they wished the meetings had been recorded, so they could check them out later or refer friends to them. It occurred to me that I could reproduce excerpts from the emails I sent out to the group, so that anyone who was interested could at least get some idea of the texts we discussed and perhaps check out some of the other readings or links I recommended. This webpage is what I have come up with.
First, a little background.
My classes at Shimer College (1961-1965) had familiarized me with small-group discussions of classic works. But although I of course engaged in countless informal discussions of books with friends over the following decades, it was not until the new millennium that I once again took part in any ongoing groups. In 2001, during one of my sojourns in Paris, I sat in on a discussion of Debord’s La Société du Spectacle. Soon after I returned to Berkeley a few friends said they wanted to start a group discussion of my translation of that same book. For the next year or two we met every other week in a Berkeley café, following the same close-reading procedure as the Paris group, and over the next few years I ended up facilitating several similar groups in the Bay Area, reading or rereading Debord’s book or articles from the SI Anthology or a few other related texts (Karl Korsch, Georg Lukács, etc.).
Overlapping with those discussions, I also took part in a “Dharma Literary Salon” with eight or ten Berkeley Zen Center friends. Although we were all Zen practitioners, we focused on Western literary works, not on Zen texts. From 2008-2011 we met once a month for potluck dinner and discussions. Eventually that group phased out and branched into two new groups.
One was led by the noted classical scholar Albert Dragstedt (husband of Naome Dragstedt, one of our Dharma Salon participants). This small private group met every other week at the Dragstedts’ home in Oakland, reading Greek classics (in translation) until Albert’s death in 2016. A few months later we resumed the group under the leadership of two of Albert’s classical-scholar colleagues, Theo Carlile and Jim Smith, and it has continued to meet at Naome’s home up to the present. Over the years we’ve gone through Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, all the Greek tragedies, quite a bit of Plato, some Aristotle, Aristophanes, and Sappho, and a number of other works.
The other group was led by another Dharma Salon participant, Patrick McMahon. Patrick had talked with Bill McClung, cofounder of University Press Bookstore in Berkeley, and arranged for us to meet every other week in the back room of the bookstore to explore Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (a.k.a. Remembrance of Things Past). Going through that immense work at a leisurely pace took us four years (2011-2015). It was a very enjoyable experience, including not only the interesting discussions in the pleasant ambience around the big table in the back of the bookstore (see the photo at the top of this webpage) but also various outings among the participants (parties, concerts, films, etc.). Around twenty-five people took part at one time or another, but a core group of nine of us were there pretty much from start to finish.
As we approached the end of the Proust project, we started to think
about where we wanted to go next. Patrick was in favor of
spending another two or three years on some similarly lengthy project, such
as Dante’s Divine Comedy or Joyce’s Ulysses. I was
in favor of exploring a greater variety of works. This debate
continued over several months, with other group participants
suggesting many different possibilities. Seeking to bring a little
order into the discussion (more than thirty books had been suggested), I proposed that
the core group vote on their
top favorites. We did this and it did indeed narrow the field
somewhat, as several of the books (or themes or genres)
nominated didn’t get many votes. We then had the meeting
described in the following email by one of the core participants, Rob Lyons.
[November 24, 2015]
Recap of Sunday conversation
Hey all,
Six of our “little band” were able to meet this morning at UPB, beginning at 11 am: Bill M., Bill G., Patrick, Ken, Richard, and myself.
Patrick began began by reminding us all of the group’s history and making a valuable distinction between a “book group” that jumps from one book to another, and a “study group” that allows for deeper readings, supplementary material, and more probing examination of the text. We went around the table, and each of us in turn spoke about what we hoped for with regard to our next reading project. There was general agreement with Patrick’s “study group” principle; and also that a two-year project seemed about right (not too long, not too short).
Ken was appreciated by all for the work he did over the past week conducting the “straw poll” of individual preferences — which required extensive email and phone communication with our far-flung group.
Ken passed out a sheet that summarized the seven “clusters” that had been identified in recent weeks:
1. Ulysses + Odyssey + Hamlet
2. Divine Comedy
3. Spanish/Latin American
4. Japanese
5. Russian
6. Humanist Classics
7. Modern Fiction Classics
Richard reviewed for our benefit the vote tally from the “straw poll.” Although there was a short discussion about the possibility of selecting the top vote-getters, which would have resulted in a potpourri of works from different periods and/or genres, there was broad acceptance of the “cluster” concept as a guiding principle. Several approaches to clustering were discussed, for example picking works of a common nationality and/or language, and picking works that were of the same era, or philosophical outlook or genre (picaresque novels, for example).
The rest of the discussion focussed on the seven clusters that Ken had listed. We began by setting aside those clusters that seemed to have the least appeal or that would present particular problems: the Japanese cluster because the Tale of Genji would require perhaps too much depth and specialization in its study; the first two (Ulysses et al, and the Divine Comedy) because there might be one or more group members who would pass on reading them (and would for that reason leave the group). Also the Modern Fiction Classics cluster was thought to be a cluster in name only, with limited connections among the various works.
Which narrowed the choices to three: Spanish, Russian, and Humanist. Rob gave a quick spiel on the Spanish and Russian clusters, and Ken gave an impassioned argument for the Humanists, which among other things included a definition of the term “humanist” (his explanation made sense to us at the time, but we may ask him to reiterate it in a follow-up email). Although the works listed were from three nations (Spain, England, and France), they were nevertheless linked by a common sensibility and outlook; they were for the most part comedic (as well as bawdy, absurd, joyous, sly); and all descended from or related in some fashion to Don Quixote:
Cervantes, Don Quixote
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel
Montaigne, Essays
Sterne, Tristram Shandy
Fielding, Tom Jones
Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson
Patrick noted that the leading advocate for the chosen cluster might reasonably be expected to act as the group leader and organizer, which Ken offered to do if the Humanist cluster were chosen. Rob threw his support behind Ken as group leader. Bill M. proposed that Ken be appointed Master of the Universe. Ken vowed to include others in supporting roles along the way, in a manner similar to that employed by Patrick in the later stages of the Proust project.
And so it came to pass that the Humanist Cluster was chosen, and Ken named as our leader.
All present were pleased and satisfied with the outcome. We agreed to share the results of our discussion with the three group members who were unable to participate — Maureen, Sandy, and Al — and ask if they had concerns or misgivings about the process we followed or its outcome. Please let us know by follow-up email how you feel about the plan, and if you object or concur.
It was agreed (pending confirmation by the three absent members) that we would begin with Don Quixote. The first group meeting will take place in January. The exact contents and sequence of readings after Don Quixote will be discussed at a future date: some suggested additions included Diderot’s Jacques the Fatalist, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and The Manuscript Found at Saragossa.
Sunday December 13 was selected as the date for the Proust Group Holiday Party; Rob volunteered his house as the venue. Party details will be discussed in subsequent emails.
All in all, a very fruitful discussion. Thanks to all for your participation and contributions!
Rob
NOTE: From here on I will be reproducing excerpts from some of the email
announcements I sent out relating to this new book group. Some
were general announcements of upcoming readings sent to several hundred local
friends (in some cases forwarded to the bookstore’s mailing list); others were sent only to those who had signed up to take part in
particular readings. I’ll leave out most of the routine logistical details and focus on
links and other information that I think might be of interest even to
people who were not at the
discussions (or even to those who were there but who might like to have
them conveniently available for future reference).
I at first referred to the series as “Quixote & Friends,” but
eventually decided to call it “Exploring the Classics.” As will become
evident, my main inspiration throughout this whole venture has been Kenneth Rexroth’s
Classics Revisited.
Don Quixote reading group
Dear Bay Area Friends,
Beginning January 17, I will be facilitating a reading and discussion of Cervantes’s Don Quixote. The group will meet every other Sunday at 4:30-7:00 p.m. in the University Press Bookstore (2430 Bancroft, Berkeley). Proceeding at a steady but leisurely pace appropriate for following the unhurried wanderings of the starry-eyed knight and his down-to-earth squire, we should arrive at the end of our journey in around five or six months. At which point we will embark on another one.*
Participation is free, but donations of $10 or so are suggested to help support the bookstore, which will be providing us with a pleasant meeting space and complimentary tea, wine, sandwiches, and cookies.
It should be fun! Please let me know if you’d like to join us.
Ken Knabb
___________
*Don Quixote is the first in a series of classic works that we will be exploring over the next two or three years, which will include Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel, Montaigne’s Essays, Fielding’s Tom Jones, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Diderot’s Jacques the Fatalist, and Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson.
[December 15, 2015]
Don Quixote translations
Dear Quixotistas (fervent or potential),
There has been a gratifyingly enthusiastic response to the news of our Don Quixote reading group, and I have already received a number of queries about which translation we will be using.
The short answer is: We will be using multiple translations. I recommend John Rutherford’s and Samuel Putnam’s, but you are welcome to use any other version you may prefer.
The longer answer is: Twenty different translations of Don Quixote have been made into English. None is entirely satisfactory. The older ones are in dated language and many of them are also rather free. The newer ones are more accurate, but none has the vigor of the original (as far as I can tell, knowing very little Spanish). So we’re going to make a virtue of necessity and use a variety of translations. We will still all be reading the same book, but when we read passages aloud in the group we can examine any notable differences among the different versions, thereby also getting a keener sense of the issues involved in literary translation.
For comparison, I have posted thirteen versions of the famous Windmill episode — all eight modern ones plus five of the most significant earlier ones — along with the original Spanish: www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/don-quixote.htm
Samuel Putnam’s translation, the first of the modern ones (1949), has been reprinted in numerous editions and has been the closest thing to an acknowledged standard version during the last 65 years. It is still probably the best written, but it is now challenged by some of the more recent versions. John Rutherford’s translation (Penguin, 2000; not to be confused with the earlier Penguin edition translated by J.M. Cohen) is the most idiomatic, which is particularly important in rendering Sancho’s folksy sayings and opinions. Burton Raffel’s is among the most rigorous in tracking the original Spanish, and his edition also contains the most extensive supplementary materials (Don Quijote: A Norton Critical Edition, 1999). But the other modern translations also have their merits and their fans, and the differences between them are mostly rather subtle.
I recommend that you get the Rutherford or the Putnam translation, in addition perhaps to Raffel’s edition for purposes of comparison and for the supplementary texts. But if you prefer one of the other modern versions — Cohen, Starkie, Grossman, Lathrop, or Montgomery — that will be fine, too. (For historical contrast we will occasionally look back at two or three of the earlier translations, but I don’t think anyone will want to use any of those versions for their main reading.)
University Press Bookstore (where we will be meeting) has ordered a bunch of the Rutherford translation; they should be in the store sometime next week. The Putnam version is widely available — online, at most libraries, and in many bookstores (there were several copies at Moe’s the last time I looked).
Also, if you know any Spanish, what better way to brush up on it than to get a Spanish edition to dip into from time to time? If you are a native Spanish speaker, all the better! We hope you will join us to help elucidate the finer points of the book.
Our first meeting is still over a month away (January 17), but you may want to take advantage of the holidays to get your copy and start reading ahead. We will be reading 80-100 pages every two weeks for the next five or six months.
We’ll be meeting in the back room of University Press Bookstore (2430 Bancroft in Berkeley). Meetings will begin with an informal period of tea, wine, sandwiches, cookies, and socializing from 4:30 to 5:00. The book discussions will start at 5:00 sharp and go till 7:00.
Cheers,
Ken
2016
Montaigne Reading Group
Dear Bay Area Friends,
Beginning July 17, I will be facilitating discussions of selections from Montaigne’s Essays. The group will meet for ten sessions, every other Sunday at 4:30-7:00 p.m. in the University Press Bookstore (2430 Bancroft, Berkeley), ending November 20. At that point we will take a holiday break, then resume our series in January.* Please let me know if you’d like to join us.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) virtually invented the essay. The French word essai originally had nothing to do with literature; it meant assay, assessment, attempt, test, trial, experiment. Montaigne applied the term to his writings because he intended them as exploratory ventures — attempts to find out about himself by examining his reactions to various subjects (and vice versa), keeping an open, almost childlike mind and seeing where things would lead. Taken as a whole, his leisurely and seemingly rambling observations form a candid self-portrait of a kind that had never been seen before. You get to know a real person rather intimately, and he is a very pleasant person to know. “That such a man wrote has truly augmented the joy of living on this earth” (Nietzsche).
We will primarily be using the Penguin edition of the Complete Essays translated by M.A. Screech, but the Donald Frame translation is also excellent – you are welcome to use that or any other edition you may have (we will occasionally compare the two versions). The bookstore has several copies of the Penguin edition.
The readings for our first meeting are “On Presumption” (Book II, #17) and “On Repenting” (Book III, #2). In these two essays Montaigne tells us how and why he is undertaking these unprecedented self-explorations.
If you would like to do some background reading, I recommend Donald Frame’s Montaigne: A Biography and Sarah Bakewell’s How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer. The first is a straight bio, the second a more thematic study. Both can be ordered online, and the bookstore has a few copies of the Bakewell.
_____________________
*In our “Quixote & Friends” series
we are exploring these eleven classic
works: Cervantes’s Don Quixote
(which we just finished),
Montaigne’s Essays
(selections), Rabelais’s
Gargantua and Pantagruel, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s
Progress, Swift’s
Gulliver’s Travels, Madame de Lafayette’s The Princesse de Clèves, Defoe’s
Moll Flanders, Fielding’s
Tom Jones, Sterne’s
Tristram Shandy, Diderot’s
Jacques the Fatalist, and
Boswell’s The Life of Samuel
Johnson.
[August 10, 2016]
A reminder that our next Montaigne discussion will be this Sunday, August 14. We will be discussing three essays: “On Friendship” (Book I, #28), “On Three Kinds of Social Intercourse” (Book III, #3), and “On the Art of Conversation” (Book III, #8).
For those of you who have the Bakewell book, Chapter 5 discusses Montaigne’s great friend Étienne de La Boétie, who is mentioned frequently in the “Friendship” essay. At the meeting C.S. will give a short report on La Boétie’s Discourse on Voluntary Servitude.
Also, Nannick will be bringing her sister Babelle (here on a visit from France) and another French friend, so we’ll have plenty of opportunity to hear how some of Montaigne’s passages sound in French!
[August 30, 2016]
I’ve just uploaded six different translations of a passage from Montaigne: www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/montaigne.htm
You might also be interested in this article by Stephen Greenblatt about Montaigne’s influence on Shakespeare (via the 1603 translation by John Florio) — www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10877821/Stephen-Greenblatt-on-Shakespeares-debt-to-Montaigne.html. Shakespeare almost certainly knew Florio personally, and his Montaigne translation is one of the few books we know for certain that Shakespeare owned.
See also Rexroth’s essays on
Montaigne, Don Quixote,
and Rabelais’s Gargantua
and Pantagruel —
www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/6.htm
[November 21, 2016]
Dear All,
Just a reminder that our next and final Montaigne
meeting will be this Sunday, November 20.
We will be discussing
Montaigne’s last essay, “On Experience”
(Book III, #13), which in many ways sums up
his entire venture. It will be a good way to wind up our
exploration of this wonderful man, who Orson
Welles called “the greatest writer of any time, anywhere.”
We will be having a joint year-end party
with participants from several other reading
groups on Sunday, December 11 (details to
come), then take a holiday break, then
resume on January 15 with Rabelais’s
Gargantua and Pantagruel.
I hope you all are recovering from the
election shock. I think there are two
interconnected ways to deal with this
bizarre new situation: (1) Fight back, and (2) Continue to pursue lives as full of humanity
as possible. For me, these discussions of
some of the great expressions of what it
means to be human are a big part of the
second aspect.
Cheers,
Ken
Rabelais Reading Group
Dear Bay Area Friends,
Beginning January 15, I will be facilitating
discussions of Rabelais’s Gargantua and
Pantagruel. The group will be meeting
every other Sunday at 4:30-7:00 p.m. in the
University Press Bookstore (2430 Bancroft,
Berkeley).
Rabelais’s work consists of five relatively
independent “Books.” We will be reading at
least the first two Books, which will take
four meetings (ending on February 26). If
participants remain enthusiastic, we will
continue with some or all of the later
Books. If participants feel like they’ve had
enough, we will instead move on to the next
works in our series.
François Rabelais (c. 1483-1552) created one of the most bawdy and exuberantly funny books ever written. Full of extravagant wordplay that would not be equaled until Joyce, this literally “larger than life” story of two giants satirizes law, education, politics, philosophy, religion, and just about everything else, and even sketches a quasi-anarchist utopia (the Abbey of Thélème, with its motto: “Do as you wish”).
“The Adventures of Gargantua and Pantagruel is a manifesto of sanity, health, and general moral salubriousness. Few books in history are more well, no characters in all literature less sick than those genial giants and their companions. This is the secret of the book. Rabelais used the broadest farce, the coarsest slapstick, to portray that primary ideal of the Renaissance, man at his optimum. . . . What does man do at his optimum? He creates. He uses his mind and body to their fullest capacities. His curiosity is always busy. He works with joy. Joy; one thing man certainly does when living at his fullest potential is laugh, and for very simple reasons.” (Kenneth Rexroth)
We will be using the Norton edition translated by Burton Raffel, and the Penguin
edition translated by M.A. Screech. The bookstore will soon have several copies
of both. I slightly prefer the Raffel translation, but the Screech version has
more useful notes, so look them over and take your pick. You are also welcome to
use any other edition you may have. You can sample eight different translations
of one of the chapters
here.
2017
[January 8, 2017]
Introductory remarks on Rabelais
Welcome to our Rabelais Reading Group. The first meeting will be January 15.
As we begin this unique and wonderful work, I’d like to make a few points.
Rabelais’s book is recognized as one of the major classics of world literature, and it has continued to be popular for centuries. But there’s no denying that some parts of it are now pretty obscure for modern readers, especially in translation.
In our first reading assignment (Gargantua, chapters 1-24), for example, Chapter 2 is so obscure that even scholars are not sure what it’s all about. Feel free to skim it, or even to skip it. Most of the other chapters are generally comprehensible, but you should be aware that we’ll inevitably be missing a lot of the nuances. It’s clear enough, for example, that Chapters 14 and 15 are satirizing an old-fashioned type of education, which is contrasted with the more modern, Renaissance/Humanist style described in later chapters; but the details depend on some knowledge of Latin and of medieval philosophy and educational practices. The same goes for Chapters 18-20, which satirize the academic jargon of the dogmatic professors of the Sorbonne, as exemplified in the speech by Master Twosides (a.k.a. Janotus de Bragmardo). You can imagine how difficult it is to translate such passages so they’re as funny as they are (or were), in the original. In other cases, the problem may be the topic. Chapters 9 and 10, which deal with color symbolism, which was apparently a popular and much-debated topic in Rabelais’s time, will probably seem less interesting to you, as they do to me. (But maybe that’s just my blind spot: perhaps more visually oriented readers will find these chapter more interesting than some of the others.)
I think you will find that the long lists, which may look rather tedious on the page, will come alive when you read them out loud. Rabelais is one of the world’s most sprawling and exuberant writers, and a large part of his “message” is communicated in this manner. In this way he’s kind of like Whitman, whose long lists of things are also a lot more vivid and exciting when read aloud.
There is also the obvious fact that Rabelais is far from politically correct. This should not be shocking news for any historically literate person. We may note some of these flaws in passing, but if such things really bother you, you will be better advised to go elsewhere. We’ll be taking a wild, rambunctious ride through a world that is larger and more all-inclusive than any quibbles we may have.
This is all to say: Don’t worry too much! When you come across something you don’t understand, or something that seems uninteresting or dubious, move on to the next paragraph or the next chapter. Most of the book is about qualities that are pretty much universal, human foibles and social absurdities that aren’t much different now than they were in Rabelais’s time. Imagine if he were to return to life and we were to point out some of the shortcomings of his writings or his era. I can see him replying: “Worthy ladies and gentlemen, you may be right! I’m willing to learn! For purposes of comparison, could you tell me how your country is currently governed?”
At the meeting we will be reading aloud the Author’s Prologue and Chapters 6, 11, and 23, but we’ll also be briefly discussing some of other themes mentioned above, as well as the original contexts of Rabelais’s work.
I am aware that some of you only recently found out about the group and have not yet had time to do the reading. Don’t worry! This first meeting will be mainly introductory, and we will mainly be discussing the passages that we have just read aloud. So please come regardless. If you haven’t already got a copy of the book, you can buy one right there at the bookstore (which has both the Raffel and Screech versions).
Till then, as Rabelais himself urged us: Be Happy!
Ken
[February 13, 2017]
Some good books on Rabelais and his time:
Donald Frame, Francois Rabelais (good basic presention)
M.A. Screech, Rabelais (the most detailed analysis)
Wyndham Lewis, Doctor Rabelais (insightful but idiosyncratic — Lewis is kind of like Ezra Pound)
Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (focuses on the carnivalesque/folk-culture aspects; that theme is important but the author is rather repetitious)
Also: Chapter 32 is discussed in detail in Erich
Auerbach’s Mimesis: The Representation of Reality
in Western Literature. I highly recommend
Auerbach’s book, which also contains really
interesting essays on Homer, Montaigne, Don
Quixote, Virginia Woolf, and many other classic works. At our next
meeting I’ll be reading aloud several
passages from Auerbach’s chapter on Rabelais.
NOTE: Meanwhile, there were other book groups going on at
the same bookstore. Bob Meyer led a two-year reading of Joyce’s
Ulysses; Patrick McMahon led a series on shorter works by Joyce and
Virginia Woolf;
Richard Zuckerman led a small group rereading portions
of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time; Brenda Hillman led
discussions of Emily Dickinson; Lois Potter and Joel Altman led
discussions of Shakespeare’s sonnets. There was quite a bit of overlapping among
participants of all these groups and the “Exploring the Classics” one.
(I took part in the Ulysses, Dickinson, and Shakespeare groups —
a pleasant change to simply reading and discussing while someone else took
care of all the preparation and facilitating!).
Better than Shakespeare?
Dear Bay Area Friends,
Beginning April 9, I will be facilitating discussions of John Bunyan’s book The Pilgrim’s Progress. The group will be meeting every other Sunday at 4:30-7:00 p.m. in the University Press Bookstore (2430 Bancroft, Berkeley) for four meetings (April 9 and 23, May 7 and 21), then in June we’ll move on to the next work in our series.* Participation is free, but donations of $10 or so per meeting are suggested to help support the bookstore, which will be providing us with a pleasant meeting space and complimentary tea, wine, sandwiches, and cookies. Please let me know if you would like to join us.
George Bernard Shaw said that Bunyan was “England’s
greatest prose writer” and that The Pilgrim’s
Progress was “better than Shakespeare.” A bit of
an exaggeration, perhaps, but not by much. Although
it is marred for modern readers by its harsh
Biblical worldview, The Pilgrim’s Progress is
nevertheless a truly marvelous book. The characters,
despite their allegorical names, are more vivid than
in almost any novel. If you make a little mental
adjustment, the book does not seem all that dated.
We are still living in a world full of Cities of
Destruction and Vanity Fairs, struggling over the
Hill Difficulty and through the Valley of the Shadow
of Death, hoping to eventually find our way to the
Delectable Mountains, but meanwhile coming upon
characters like Mr. Talkative, Madam Bubble, Mr.
Hypocrite, Mr. Pliable, Mr. Legality, Mr. Malice,
Mr. Money-Love, Mr. Worldly-Wiseman, Parson
Two-Tongues, Lord Fair-Speech, and Lady Feigning, but
occasionally also a Miss Mercy or a Mr. Great-Heart.
In our discussions we will also be noting the
elements of social critique in Bunyan’s book.
Such elements were perforce carefully disguised
or played down — the book was written while
Bunyan was in prison, and even when he got out
there was widespread censorship — but the book
definitely reflects the tumultuous experiences
of the English Revolution (1640-1660).
_______________
*Exploring the Classics is an ongoing series, led by Ken Knabb and hosted by University Press Bookstore, in which we are exploring these classic works: Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Montaigne’s Essays, Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Madame de Lafayette’s The Princesse de Clèves, Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Fielding’s Tom Jones, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Diderot’s Jacques the Fatalist, and Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson.
_______________
* * *
I have been asked to explain how this
particular list was chosen. A year and a half ago,
as we neared the end of our four-year Proust
exploration at University Press Bookstore, we
debated where to go from there. There was a general
desire to continue with another multiyear project,
either an intensive study of one very long work or a
slightly more rapid exploration of a series of
related works. I was in favor of the latter idea.
When our group did a preliminary vote for favorites
among some thirty works that had been nominated, I
pointed out that six of the top vote-getters were in
the same general period (16th-18th centuries) and
were akin in many ways — Gargantua and Pantagruel, Montaigne’s
Essays, Don Quixote, Tom Jones,
Tristram
Shandy, and Boswell’s Life of Johnson —
and would thus make a very nice series. After some
discussion, my proposal was unanimously agreed to,
on the condition that I would take the
responsibility of leading it. I happily agreed to do
this since I was enthusiastic about all of these
works. (Organizing these discussions is a labor of
love for me. I don’t receive any remuneration; the
donations all go toward helping the bookstore stay
in business.)
In addition to the six above-mentioned works (all
rather lengthy), I’ve added a few shorter works that
fill in and illuminate the interconnections: Pilgrim’s Progress and
Gulliver’s Travels,
two satirical journeys through human society in the
tradition of Rabelais and Don Quixote; and
two other works that mark important stages in the
early development of the novel: The Princesse de
Clèves and Moll Flanders. The
Princesse de Clèves is the first
subtle psychological novel (apart from The Tale
of Genji, also written by a woman) and thus the
ancestor of Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust, Henry James,
etc., while Defoe, whose vivid colloquial style was
influenced by Bunyan, is the ancestor of all
subsequent “realist” fiction. The realism of Tom
Jones (yet another “journey” story) is
continually disrupted by the author’s amusing
comments. Just as amusing but much more mentally
disruptive, Tristram Shandy draws on all the
earlier works mentioned and its narrative techniques
foreshadow Joyce and Virginia Woolf. I’ve also added
Diderot’s Jacques the Fatalist since it was
directly inspired by Sterne’s book. Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, often considered the
greatest biography ever written, provides a
magnificent nonfictional perspective on the
18th-century British world portrayed by Defoe,
Fielding, and Sterne.
Our group has already had a lot of fun exploring
Don Quixote and Montaigne’s Essays, and
we’re just about to finish Rabelais. Pilgrim’s
Progress, Gulliver’s Travels, The Princesse de Clèves,
and Moll Flanders will take about two months
each, bringing us to the end of this year. Tom
Jones, Tristram Shandy, and Jacques the
Fatalist will take us through most of 2018.
Boswell’s Life of Johnson will extend into
the beginning of 2019.
I encourage you to participate in any or all of
these explorations.
Ken
[April 10, 2017]
I’m gratified that our first Pilgrim’s
Progress meeting went so well. I had been
worried that people might be put off by the book’s
religious worldview, but my sense is that just about
everybody left the meeting enthused about the
vividness of the book’s characters, the liveliness
of the narration, and the intensity of the vision.
Some relevant texts and links
I mentioned at that
meeting (these readings are all optional, I mention
them simply in case you wish to pursue any of these
topics):
Dorothy Van Ghent’s The English Novel includes essays on Don Quixote, Pilgrim’s Progress, Moll Flanders, Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy, and a dozen others (Austen, Dickens, Hardy, Conrad, Lawrence, Joyce, etc.).
Christopher Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. My brief review of Hill’s book is at www.bopsecrets.org/recent/reviews.htm
For more on the radical elements of the English Revolution (1640-1660), see the chapter on the Diggers in Rexroth’s Communalism: From Its Origins to the Twentieth Century — www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/communalism4.htm. Bunyan was not exactly a proponent of these extremist radical currents, but he lived among them and they certainly influenced his social views.
Rexroth’s essay on Pilgrim’s Progress — www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/6A.htm#Pilgrims-Progress
For comic relief, see also Hawthorne’s story “The Celestial Railroad” — https://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/celest.htm
[May 12, 2017]
Exploring the Classics
Dear Bay Area Friends,
During the last several years I’ve taken part in a number of book discussion groups. Some have dealt with radical works such as Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle or selected articles from the Situationist International Anthology. Others have examined various literary classics, from Homer and Shakespeare to Proust and Joyce. These two types of groups involve rather different aims and attitudes, but I like to think of them as complementary. The first type focuses on radical tactics and strategy — how we might better understand and transform the absurd social system in which we find ourselves. The second is more leisurely and open-ended — exploring and enjoying imaginative works that enliven and potentially illuminate our lives in general.
Recently I’ve been leading one such group at the University Press Bookstore in Berkeley. During the last year and a half we’ve gone through Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Montaigne’s Essays, Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel, and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and are about to continue with Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Madame de Lafayette’s The Princesse de Clèves, Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Fielding’s Tom Jones, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Diderot’s Jacques the Fatalist, and Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson.
To my taste, few things in life are more consistently enjoyable than discussing these kinds of works with congenial companions, preferably accompanied by good food and drinks. That’s the original sense of the word symposium (“banquet”), as in Plato’s dialogue of that name, where Socrates drinks all his companions under the table as they debate the nature of love far into the night.
Our gatherings don’t last quite that long and we don’t drink quite that much, but the discussions are just as lively. We are exploring these books because they continue to be relevant. They continue to engage us because they address the perennial life issues that we all face in one way or another. They raise difficult questions rather than offering easy answers. They may not tell us what to do about our specific situations, personal or political, but they help provide a broader context for whatever decisions we do make, giving us a better sense of the varieties and potentialities of human experience, from the sublime to the ridiculous.
And contrary to popular misconception, they are also among the most entertaining books ever written. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have continued to be eagerly read and reread by countless people over the centuries.
Our discussions take place every other Sunday, 4:30-7:00 p.m., at the University Press Bookstore (2430 Bancroft in Berkeley). Participation is free, but donations of $10 or so per meeting are suggested to help support the bookstore, which provides us with a pleasant meeting space and complimentary tea, wine, sandwiches, and cookies.
Let me know if you’d like to join us.
Ken
Gulliver’s Travels
“If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would certainly put Gulliver’s Travels among them.” (George Orwell)
This Sunday (June 4) we will begin our exploration of Jonathan Swift’s satirical masterpiece, Gulliver’s Travels. Its portrayal of humanity is so scathing that it might be considered the ancestor of black comedy, but most of the things Swift attacks are in fact pretty universal and undeniable — human foibles and social absurdities that aren’t much different now than they were in his time.
Imagine if Swift were to return to life in 2017 America and we were to tell him that he exaggerated the failings of humanity. I can see him replying: “Ladies and gentlemen of this strange future land, you may be right! I thought there were a lot of absurdities in my time and I attacked them accordingly. But perhaps things have improved since then. For purposes of comparison, could you tell me how your country is currently governed?”
Three very interesting essays on
the book:
A short one by Rexroth: http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/6A.htm
A long one by Orwell: http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/swift/english/e_swift
A
review by Fintan O’Toole: “Swift: The Genius of Creative
Destruction”:
http://www.politique-actu.com/dossier/swift-genius-creative-destruction-fintan-toole-nyrb/941865/.
This latter is a good refutation of
the traditional portrayals of Swift
as insane, sexist, perverse,
misanthropist, etc., and at the same
time a favorable review of Leo
Damrosch’s recent biography of
Swift, which I also recommend.
Princesse de Clèves reading group
Dear Bay Area Friends,
Beginning July 30 I will be facilitating discussions of Madame de Lafayette’s short novel, The Princesse de Clèves.
First published anonymously in 1678, Madame de Lafayette’s The Princesse de Clèves marked a turning point in the history of literary fiction. In retrospect, it can be seen as the first subtle psychological novel (with the one notable exception of The Tale of Genji, also written by a woman) and thus as the ancestor of Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf. But it’s more than a mere ancestor. Page for page, it’s as pithy as any of those later authors and far more concise (a mere 150 pages). We will thus be doing a particularly close examination, reading numerous passages aloud, consulting the original French version, clarifying the historical contexts, analyzing the moral dilemmas, and savoring the complex psychological nuances of this remarkable little book.
Please let me know if you’re interested in joining us.
Moll Flanders reading group
Dear Bay Area Friends,
Beginning September 24, I will be facilitating discussions of Daniel Defoe’s novel Moll Flanders. We’ll be using the Penguin Classics edition, edited by David Blewett (copies are available in the bookstore). Please let me know if you’d like to join us.
Soldier, speculator, and secret agent, Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) was also one of the most prolific authors of all time. In addition to editing more than a dozen newspapers, composing answers for some of the first advice columns, and writing hundreds of articles, pamphlets, and books on politics, economics, geography, religion, marriage, manners, morals, crime, psychology, superstition, and many other topics, he also authored a number of fictional works that are at the origin of the English novel, two of which have remained deservedly popular for nearly 300 years: Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Moll Flanders (1722).
“In Defoe’s novels everything is stripped to the bare, narrative substance, and it is this that reveals the psychology or morality of the individual. The most significant details are purely objective, exterior. The interiority of the characters is revealed by their elaborately presented outside. When they talk about their own motives, their psychology, their morals, their self-analyses and self-justifications are to be read backwards, as of course is true of most people. . . . Defoe was perfectly conscious of the parallel he was drawing between the morality of the complete whore and that of the new middle class which was rising around him, yet he remains aware of Moll Flanders as a woman of flesh and blood, and we in turn are aware of her. She comes to life in our minds as clearly as Chaucer’s wife of Bath. . . . When we come to the end with Moll, old, comfortable, and probably fat, and look back over a long life that came so often so near to total disaster, we think, ‘Well, old girl, you sure pulled a fast one.’ ” (Kenneth Rexroth)
Tom Jones reading group
Dear Bay Area Friends,
Beginning November 19, I will be facilitating discussions of Henry Fielding’s novel Tom Jones. The group will be meeting every other Sunday at 4:30-7:00 p.m. in the University Press Bookstore (2430 Bancroft in Berkeley) for seven meetings (November 19, December 3 and 17, January 14 and 28, February 11 and 25), followed by an eighth meeting (March 11) when we’ll watch Tony Richardson’s delightful film of the book. Then we’ll move on to the next work in our series. We’ll be using the Penguin Classics edition, edited by Keymer and Wakely (copies are available in the bookstore). Please let me know if you’d like to join us.
Henry Fielding’s lusty “comic-epic in prose” is one of the most entertaining books ever written. He declared that his subject was nothing less than “HUMAN NATURE” in all its variety, and few other writers besides Chaucer or Dickens could justify such a claim so well. Adding to the fun is the author’s periodically stepping back from the narration to give his own ironic comments on the characters and their adventures.
“Tom Jones has been compared to Odysseus and Huck Finn. Huck he somewhat resembles; Odysseus not at all. He is more like a compound of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza — not a mixture, but a chemical compound of antagonistic qualities and virtues which has produced a new being. The book is an immense panorama of mid-eighteenth-century England, as populous as any novel of Tolstoy’s or Dostoievsky’s. Comparison, however, with a work like War and Peace immediately reveals a profound difference. The plot of Tom Jones is not a ‘real life’ story but a fairy tale, disguised with realism. But it is not naturalism, and it is realism only in the broadest sense. It is an immensely complicated farce. This all gives the book an air of quiet madness.” (Kenneth Rexroth)
[December 17, 2017]
Dear Jonesians,
Following a holiday break, our next Tom Jones
meeting will be Sunday, January 14.
For those of you who have the time and interest, here are some recommended secondary readings:
Martin Battestin, Henry Fielding: A Life (the definitive biography, superseding several earlier ones)
Martin Battestin (ed.), Twentieth Century Interpretations of Tom Jones: A Collection of Critical Essays
Robert Alter, Fielding and the Nature of the Novel (good general analysis, including refutations of some critics’ disparagement of Fielding)
Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews (Fielding’s other great novel, shorter but similar in many ways to Tom Jones; some editions also include Shamela, Fielding’s hilarious parody of Richardson’s Pamela)
2018
[March 5, 2018]
Film Classics in Berkeley
Two classic literary films will be shown at University Press Bookstore in Berkeley:
Tom Jones (1963; directed by Tony Richardson; screenplay by John Osborne. 125 minutes). This delightful film won four Oscars, including best film and best screenplay, with six nominations for best actors and supporting actors. Kenneth Rexroth had this to say when it first came out: “By and large, pictures that move don’t move me, but Tom Jones is close to the best that the industry can do. It is a landmark in the history of cinema, as they say in the highbrow reviews, which means that it does not insult the intelligence of an adult.” www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/sf/1964.htm
Sunday, March 11, 6:00 p.m., at UPB (2430 Bancroft in Berkeley).La Princesse de Clèves (1961; directed by Jean Delannoy; screenplay by Jean Cocteau. 100 minutes. French with English subtitles). This intense, tightly knit drama features superlative acting with authentic Renaissance costumes and decor.
Sunday, March 25, 6:00 p.m., at UPB (2430 Bancroft in Berkeley).
Film adaptations of literary classics are usually
disappointing. These two are among the rare
exceptions
that manage to be excellent cinematic works while
conveying the gist of the original works. They are a
supplement to UPB’s ongoing reading series, “Exploring the Classics with Ken Knabb,” but you
can enjoy
the films even if you haven’t read the books. Each
film will be introduced by Ken and followed by open
discussion.
Tristram Shandy reading group
Dear Bay Area Friends,
Beginning April 8, I will be facilitating discussions of Laurence Sterne’s novel Tristram Shandy. Please let me know if you’d like to join us.
Tristram Shandy (1760) is a truly unique work — a zany, endlessly meandering exploration of the vast possibilities of life and literature, and at the same time a wry demonstration of their limitations. Much of the book is presented through stream-of-consciousness (more than a century before Joyce and Woolf) and the characters’ thoughts are full of odd and embarrassing things just like yours and mine are. Yet throughout all the seemingly chaotic narration the characters are being revealed with a whimsical but ultimately compassionate humor. The astonishing narrative innovations are what first strike the reader, but those characters and that good humor are what continue to make this book loved as well as admired.
“Sterne is the most liberated spirit of all time, in comparison with whom all others seem stiff, square, intolerant, and boorishly direct. . . . He, the supplest of authors, communicates something of this suppleness to his readers. Indeed, Sterne unintentionally reverses these roles, and is sometimes as much reader as author; his book resembles a play within a play, an audience observed by another audience. . . . The reader who demands to know exactly what Sterne really thinks of a thing, whether he is making a serious or a laughing face, must be given up for lost: for Sterne knows how to encompass both in a single facial expression, how to knot together profundity and farce.” (Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human)
You can read the complete Nietzsche passage here — https://biblioklept.org/2012/03/22/the-freest-writer-nietzsche-on-laurence-sterne/
And here’s Rexroth’s essay on Tristram Shandy —
www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/6B.htm#Tristram-Shandy
[May 24, 2018]
Looking ahead with our book group
Dear Fellow Explorers,
I’ve been leading the “Exploring the Classics” group at University Press Books for the past two and a half years. I’ve enjoyed it a lot, and my impression is that most of the other participants have too.
We are now approaching the end of the originally planned series of readings. After Tristram Shandy (3 more meetings) we’ll be doing Diderot’s Jacques the Fatalist (4 meetings) and then conclude with some selections from Boswell and Johnson (7 meetings), which will take us to the end of this year.
Bill McClung, our esteemed UPB host, has said he’d like me to continue leading the group in this manner “forever.” That seems a bit excessive, but I am willing and indeed eager to carry on for the next few years.
In fact, I’ve already planned a new series of great novels and poems (and even some songs!) of the 19th century and early 20th century (mostly French and English), which will take approximately two years. Then I envision dropping the exclusively European focus and embarking on a several-year journey through a wider range of classics from diverse periods and cultures around the world.
But before I go into detail about all that, I’d like to hear from you. Are you okay with my continuing to lead the group and choose the readings, as I’ve been doing? Or would you prefer to have different leaders or facilitators, or to do different kinds of readings? Please let me know your thoughts about these issues, or about any problems you may have had with the group, or any suggestions you may have for improving it.
Cheers,
Ken
(I’m sending this message to
the 60+ people who have attended at least three
meetings of the group.)
NOTE:
That announcement/query got a
couple dozen replies, all enthusiastically urging me
to continue just as I had been doing. I’ll quote
just one of them:
“First, I vote that you lead the group for as long as you can and want to do so (which, like Bill, I hope is forever). You are such a good facilitator, and really know the works and talk about them intelligently. Not so many people can do that. You are a natural at it, so please don’t hand it over to someone else. Adding more facilitators will just alter the flow of it all. Changes? Suggestions? I don’t know that you need to change anything. I don’t think improvement is needed. I love this reading group so much! It is so wonderful on many levels: the people are all avid and interested readers, the works are so important and I am learning so much, and the charming setting (surrounded by excellent books) and the good wine and tasty snacks — it all works so perfectly. I always look forward to the book group on alternate Sundays, which is also the perfect frequency for such an endeavor. Thank you so much for all the wonder and knowledge and joy you share! You put so much energy into it, I am always amazed. You are one of the reasons that Berkeley remains an interesting place to be.”
[June 21, 2018]
Nine-Year Plan
Dear UPB Book Group Participants,
Responses to my recent
email query (“Are you okay with my continuing to
lead our
book group and choose the readings?”) were
overwhelmingly and in many cases
enthusiastically in favor. I’m very grateful for
this confidence and appreciation — but
you may not have realized just what you were
getting yourselves into!
Here’s my tentative plan for the next six years (with estimated number of meetings). I’m excited about all of these works, including how they interconnect with each other in multitudinous ways, and I hope you will join us for as many of them as possible.
SERIES 1
(2016-2018):
Cervantes, Don Quixote [12]
Montaigne, Selected Essays [10]
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantegruel [6]
Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress [4]
Swift, Gulliver’s Travels [4]
Madame de Lafayette, The Princesse de Clèves
[4]
Defoe, Moll Flanders [4]
Fielding, Tom Jones [7]
Sterne, Tristram Shandy [7]
Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist and His Master
[4]
Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
(abridged) + Selected Writings by Johnson [7]
SERIES 2:
2019
Stendhal, The Red and the Black [7]
Balzac, Lost Illusions [7]
Flaubert, Madame Bovary [6]
Blake, Selected Poems [4]
2020
Whitman, Selected Poems [4]
Baudelaire, Selected Poems [4]
Rimbaud, Selected Poems + A Season in Hell
[4]
Other French Poets 1850-1950 [5]
French Songwriters 1820-1980 [5]
2021
D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love [6]
Ford Madox Ford, Parade’s End [11]
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook [8]
SERIES 3:
2022
The Epic of Gilgamesh [2]
The Mahabharata (abridged) [4]
Herodotus, The Histories [10]
Poems from the Greek Anthology [2]
Sappho, Selected Poems [2]
Apuleius, The Golden Ass [3]
2023
Tao Te Ching + Chuang Tzu [4]
Tu Fu, Selected Poems [4]
Basho, Selected Poems + Narrow Road to the
Interior [4]
Women Poets of China and Japan [3]
Cao Xueqin, The Dream of the Red Chamber
(abridged) [4]
Arabian Nights (selections) [6]
2024
Njal’s Saga [5]
The Kalevala [6]
Paul Radin, African Folktales [3]
Jaime de Angulo, Indian Tales [3]
English and Scottish Folk Ballads [4]
Shakespeare and Robert Burns, Selected Songs [3]
SERIES 4 (2025 and
after):
Continue roaming among various classics
and/or
Explore some more modern works
and/or
Tackle The Tale of Genji (which would
take about a year to do appropriately) . . .
Note: I’ve already
chosen particular translations and/or editions
for most of these
works, but I’m omitting them here so you can get
an overview of the whole selection
without too much clutter. I’ll send out those
details sometime soon, in case you want
to read some of the books ahead of time.
NOTE: As you can see from the above, the Exploring the Classics
group is not run democratically. My proposed program
of readings was indeed democratically accepted by the Proust core group
back in 2015, but I was given carte blanche to organize everything and
work out the details. Three years later, when we had gone through the
series of books I had proposed, I figured that was the end of my
“mandate.” Hence my query to the group participants. Since there was
enthusiastic unanimity in favor of my continuing as before, I have done
so.
There are, of course, many other ways to organize book groups. When a correspondant some time ago asked me How do you run a book group? I replied in part as follows:
There are many different ways. Depends on where and how often you’re meeting, how many people are in it, what topics or genres are being read, what diverse interests or expertises the participants have, how you determine which books will be read, who facilitates and how, etc. There’s an interesting book called Salons: The Joy of Conversation by Jaida Sandra & Jon Spayde that goes into all sorts of group types and group dynamics (book groups being simply one type of “salon” among many others).
One common problem in book groups is that people often disagree about which books to read. One solution (if you’re envisaging longer works) is to vote and go with the majority. Another is to do short works and rotate the choice from person to person. This latter method may provide some balance and variety, but it also risks leading to a lot of so-so works being chosen simply because they just came out and have been favorably reviewed somewhere. Another alternative is for one person who is reasonably qualified to take the initiative and see who coalesces around him or her. This is how my classics group works. I choose the books and I lead the discussions. Those who are interested in the particular books I’ve chosen (or who trust my judgment and are happy to go with whatever I choose) join the group. Others are of course free to join other groups or to form their own groups with different texts and processes. I also take part in two other groups where someone else is in charge in a similar way. . . .
It remains to be seen how your group will fit in with all these possibilities. You’ll have to work out things like what to read and who facilitates and how they do it. The important thing is to encourage active participation by everyone in the discussion — that’s where you really learn things and develop your critical skills, instead of just absorbing information or approved viewpoints. . . .
However it works out, the process is usually interesting and fun! Let me know how it goes.
Diderot’s Jacques the Fatalist
Dear Bay Area Friends,
Beginning July 22, I will be facilitating discussions of Diderot’s novel Jacques the Fatalist and His Master.
Denis Diderot (1713-1784), one of the pivotal figures in human history, is most well known for editing the Encyclopédie, but he was an extremely versatile thinker and writer in numerous fields, including fiction. Jacques the Fatalist and His Master is a lively picaresque/philosophical/satirical “novel” in which, in contrast to Don Quixote, the servant is far more intelligent than his master. It has numerous modernistic or even “postmodern” features, partly inspired by Sterne’s Tristram Shandy.
“Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and Denis Diderot’s Jacques the Fatalist are for me the two greatest novelistic works of the eighteenth century, two novels conceived as grand games. They reach heights of playfulness, of lightness, never scaled before or since.” (Milan Kundera)
“This is not a usual novel. Diderot has written Jacques the Fatalist to show what a novel is not, what a novel could be, and, in many ways, to suggest that all that has been called the novel before should be dismissed. . . . Jacques is pregnant with premonitions of modern literary aims. Stream of consciousness, surrealism, flashback, and time manipulation — they’re all here in Diderot, whether or not he was fully aware of the potential of his playful experiment.” (Robert Loy in his Translator’s Introduction)
[July 24, 2018]
Diderot-related topics
Dear Diderotistes,
We will have two more meetings in which we will directly read and discuss Jacques the Fatalist (August 5 and August 19). Then, for our final meeting (September 2) I’d like to open things up in various directions. We can continue to discuss anything about the book, but I think it would also be interesting for any of you who feel like it to read one of Diderot’s other works, or some work or topic related to him or his time, and give us a 5-minute report on it.
Here are some suggestions:
Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew [Diderot’s other major fictional masterpiece, about 100 pages]
Diderot, D’Alembert’s Dream and/or Conversation Between D’Alembert and Diderot [two philosophical dialogues]
Diderot, The Nun [an anti-religion novel]
. . . or any other works by Diderot [he wrote a number of shorter discourses on various topics and a lot of art criticism, and there are various selections of his letters, etc.]
Jean d’Alembert, Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopédie
Philipp Blom, Enlightening the World: Encyclopédie: The Book That Changed the Course of History [or any other study of the Encyclopédie]
Philip Furbank, Diderot: A Critical Biography [or any other bio or study of Diderot]
Alice Fredman, Diderot and Sterne [I can loan you my copy.]
Josef Weber, Appeal for an English Edition of Diderot’s “Jack the Fatalist” [I’ll soon be sending out a PDF of this lengthy article.]
A. Robert Loy, Diderot’s Determined Fatalist [the first major study of Jacques the Fatalist in English, but very hard to find]
A. Robert Loy, That Infernal Affair [letters between Diderot, Rousseau, d’Alembert, Voltaire, Madame d’Epinay, etc., revealing their multifaceted interrelations, disputes, jealousies, and domestic complications. Reads like a novel, or even a detective story (who is going to break up with whom? who was at fault in this particular dispute?). I can loan you my copy.]
Milan Kundera, Jacques and His Master: An Homage to Diderot in Three Acts
Pierre Beaumarchais, The Marriage of Figaro [the play, not the opera]
Please let me know if you would like to read and report on one of these
works.
[August 30, 2018]
Dear Diderotistes,
A reminder that our fourth and final Jacques the Fatalist meeting will be this Sunday (September 2). This meeting will feature short reports on various Diderot-related topics. So far, the following six reports are planned:
— Marie-Paule will report on Diderot’s Supplement to Bougainville’s Voyage
— Jim will relate Jacques to My Dinner with André.
— Lucia will report on Beaumarchais’s The Marriage of Figaro.
— Bill G. will report on Diderot’s friend Baron D’Holbach and the issues of fatalism/determinism.
— I will report on Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew
— I will also report on Josef Weber’s Appeal for an English Edition of Diderot’s “Jack the Fatalist” (www.bopsecrets.org/CF/weber-diderot.htm).
Let me know if you’d like to report on any other Diderot-related topic (suggested time 5-10 minutes). But there is no obligation — feel free to simply sit back and listen to the others’ reports and maybe ask them some questions.
P.S. Milan Kundera wrote a play
called Jacques and His Master.
You can read his very interesting
Introduction to it here —
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/17/specials/kundera-variation.html
Boswell-Johnson reading group
Interviewer: “What is your desert island book?”
Samuel Beckett: “Boswell’s Life of Johnson.”“Boswell’s Johnson is one of the greatest creations in English Literature, second only to Sherlock Holmes.”
—Terry Bisson (award-winning science fiction writer, who will be joining our discussions)
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was the dominant literary personality of his era — compiler of the first great English dictionary, editor of Shakespeare, biographer of the English poets, author of poems, essays, and fiction, and “the greatest social talker whose talk has been recorded.”
James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) is widely considered one of the greatest biographies ever written, both because of the unique charisma and eccentricities of its subject and because of the innovatively intimate manner of its narration. Much of it consists of Johnson’s conversations, responding to questions by Boswell or skewering others with the witty putdowns that have made him one of the most quoted persons in history.
Beginning September 16, our “Exploring the Classics” group will be reading and discussing an abridged version of Boswell’s book along with selections from Johnson’s own writings. We’ll be using The Portable Johnson and Boswell (Viking Press, ed. Kronenberger). This book is out of print, but you can easily find a cheap used copy here — www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-home-_-Results&an=&tn=portable+johnson+and+boswell&kn=&isbn
Please let me know if you’d like to join us.
[November 22, 2018]
Boswell-Johnson reports
Our final Boswell/Johnson meeting (December 9) will be devoted to individual reports on other works by Johnson or Boswell or on related topics. So far, we have tentatively lined up:
— Sabrina, reporting on the book Dr. Johnson’s London
— Gerhard, reporting on the book Printing Technology, Letters, and Samuel Johnson
— Alix, reporting on novelist/diarist Fanny Burney
— Lisa, reporting on painter Joshua Reynolds
— Kit, reporting on Johnson’s and Boswell’s accounts of their trip through Scotland
— Ken, reporting on Johnson’s philosophical novel Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
— Ken, reporting on Boswell’s private journals
Let me know if you would also like to do one. But there is absolutely no obligation — you are quite welcome to simply take it easy and enjoy the others’ reports. As you can see, we’ve already got a pretty full schedule.
Reports should be around 8-10 minutes long. At the 12-minute point a stern warning will be given. At 15 minutes the speaker will be bound and gagged even if he/she is in the middle of a sentence.
Following the December 9 meeting we
will take a holiday break, then resume
on January 6 with Stendhal’s The Red
and the Black.
The Red and the Black
Dear Bay Area Friends,
Beginning January 6, 2019, I will be facilitating discussions of Stendhal’s superlative novel The Red and the Black. We’ll be using the Burton Raffel translation (Modern Library paperback).
“Hardly another man of letters has been as much a man of the world as Stendhal. Napoleon’s commissary officer on the retreat from Moscow; consul in Civita Vecchia, the port of Rome; wit of the salons of the Empire and terror of those of the Restoration; lover of actresses, courtesans, and noblewomen — this is a man to whom words were always instruments of action. He is an adult writing for adults. . . . In its sharp definition, breathless pace, crowded frames, melodrama, The Red and the Black anticipates the methods of the cinema. But its characters are like so many modern people whose disasters are spread on the newspapers: they seem to have seen too many movies. As the novel progresses, their actions acquire an ever-increasing, ever more agonizing ridiculousness. The hero, Julien Sorel, is destroyed by the mean unreality of the world in which his Napoleonic campaigns of sex and ambition are planned. His battles must be fought not with armies, but with the limitless fraud of organized society. The Red and the Black is the first black comedy.” (Rexroth)
2019
Balzac’s Lost Illusions
Dear Bay Area Friends,
Beginning March 17, I will be facilitating discussions of Balzac’s great novel Lost Illusions. . . . We’ll be using the Kathleen Raine translation (Modern Library paperback).
“Balzac is the epic poet of the barbarous age of industrial commercial civilization, what Marx called the period of primitive accumulation. The two authors even have certain emotional and personality traits in common. Both are daemonic writers driven by prophetic fury into rebellion against the human condition. This is overt in Marx but is always there, just below the surface, in Balzac, ready to erupt in caustic analysis of human motivation. . . . Balzac’s daemonic possession distinguishes him from all other novelists. In the twenty years of his productivity he wrote more than any other major writer in history. Very little of it is hasty or slipshod, but it is all driven, and it drives the reader. His narrative method takes possession of you in a way that would not be seen again until the full development of the cinema. A novel by Balzac is an obsession which you are at liberty to adopt for a few hours.” (Rexroth)
[May 22, 2019]
Dear Balzacians,
A reminder that our next and last Lost Illusions meeting will be this Sunday (May 26). For this final meeting we will be going around the table to hear people’s thoughts on anything about Balzac or his book. This procedure has often led to very interesting discussions, sometimes including unexpected views about unexpected topics, so I hope you will show up even if you haven’t been able to do all the reading.
If you are curious about the ultimate fate of Lucien de Rubempré and his mysterious and sinister new companion Vautrin, check out A Harlot High and Low (Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes). It’s the sequel to Lost Illusions and it’s a real thriller.
If you’ve really got the Balzac bug, here are a few of his other books you might want to explore:
Père Goriot (I recommend the Norton edition, translated by Burton Raffel)
Eugénie Grandet
Cousin Bette
Cousin Pons
Madame Bovary reading group
Dear Bay Area Friends,
Beginning June 9, I will be facilitating discussions of Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary. . . . Please let me know if you’d like to join us.
“Flaubert’s novels were conceived as head-on attacks on middle-class life in all its aspects, its ideals as well as its realities. Yet what happens? Flaubert was a tireless craftsman, and as he reworked his sentences, seeking always the ultimate precision of a surgical instrument, the simplicity of his approach yielded before an irony of which he never became fully conscious. . . . Flaubert had a vision, a model, of how words should function, and he ground down each phrase until it fitted that model, a kind of abstract template that did not merely shape rhythm and image, but revealed a fundamental quality of the sensibility. Among the painters Courbet, Manet, Degas, and then all the Impressionists, nature was being illuminated with a new kind of light, never seen before. For sheer brilliance of direct vision, Flaubert’s prose surpasses any of them, and has yet to be equaled by any of his disciples. All the manifold details of life, of nature, of still life, glow with an internal fire, the fire of burning prose that has been distilled to a perfect transparency.” (Rexroth).
[June 3, 2019]
Some preliminary remarks on Flaubert’s book:
There have been more than twenty different English translations of Madame Bovary. We’ll be using the recent translation by Lydia Davis, which is certainly one of the best, but we will occasionally compare passages from other versions, as well as from the original French. (Two participants in our group are French women who can help us with the latter.)
Madame Bovary is more meticulously written than any of the other works we’ve explored, so I encourage you to take your time and read it carefully. This is not a text you can just breeze through. Although it is not a particularly long book, Flaubert took five years to write it, often working more than twelve hours a day, carefully weighing the nuances of each word and the rhythm of each sentence, not just for its own immediate impact but for its interconnection with the whole ambience he strove to convey. Any hint of ostentatious dramatics or authorial commentary was ruthlessly weeded out. This does not mean that the book is just a drab “naturalistic” narrative. There are clearly some implicit judgments going on (aesthetic, ethical, political), but they are usually conveyed by subtle ironies. As Rexroth suggests, it may be appropriate to compare its composition and effects with those of the great French paintings that were being made during the same period.
We will be seeing what we can make of
all that, but to do so we will have to
slow down and attune our own awarenesses
and responses.
[June 24, 2019]
Special guest at final Flaubert meeting
Dear Flaubertians,
I’m happy to report that Gloria
Frym, the friend whom I mentioned in
a previous email, has agreed
to join us at our fifth and final
Flaubert meeting: August 4.
Gloria is a highly regarded poet,
fiction writer, essayist, and
teacher — see here for more
details:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Frym.
As it happens, she has recently
written an essay “My Emma Bovary:
Re-Reading and Empathy.” This essay
is not yet published, but she will
read some or all of it to us at our
meeting, followed by Q&A about it or
any other Flaubert-related topics.
Stendhal . . . Balzac . . . Flaubert . . . MARX
Dear Bay Area Friends,
In our “Exploring the Classics” group we’ve recently been reading Stendhal’s The Red and the Black, Balzac’s Lost Illusions, and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, all of which present scathing pictures of French society during the early nineteenth century. Now we’re about to see what another observer had to say about that same society at the point when its distresses and contradictions came to a head in the revolution of 1848. We will be reading Karl Marx’s short book The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, which analyzes the revolution and its aftermath from 1848 through the 1851 coup d’état by Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew, Louis (one of the earliest “celebrity politicians”).
If you are among the many who are under the erroneous impression that Marx had something to do with twentieth-century “Communist” regimes and that his writings are dull economic rants, you may be in for a pleasant surprise. Marx strove to encourage humanity’s self-liberation from all forms of oppression and authority, and though no one has ever accused him of being light reading, when he has a mind to he can be as pithy and dramatic as any literary author. The opening chapter of The Eighteenth Brumaire is a vivid example:
Hegel remarks somewhere that all the great events and characters of world history occur, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. . . . Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered and transmitted from the past. The tradition of the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the minds of the living. . . . The social revolution of the nineteenth century can only create its poetry from the future, not from the past. . . . Bourgeois revolutions, such as those of the eighteenth century, storm swiftly from success to success. They outdo each other in dramatic effects; men and things seem set in sparkling diamonds and each day’s spirit is ecstatic. But they are short-lived; they soon reach their zenith, and society then has to undergo a long period of discontent until it has learned to soberly assimilate the results of its period of storm and stress. In contrast, proletarian revolutions, such as those of the nineteenth century, constantly criticize themselves and interrupt themselves. They return to what has apparently already been accomplished in order to begin the task anew; they pitilessly mock the weaknesses, hesitations, and inadequacies of their first attempts; they seem to throw down their adversary only to see him draw new strength from the earth and rise again, more colossal than ever; confronted with the unclear immensity of their own goals, they shrink back again and again, until at last a situation is created that makes all turning back impossible and the conditions themselves cry out: “Here is the rose, dance here!”
[July 25, 2019]
A reminder that we will be starting our Marx readings in just three weeks. We will be discussing three short works that bear on the French revolution of 1848. Here is the tentative schedule:
August 18: The
Communist Manifesto
September 1: The Class
Struggles in France: 1848-1850,
chapters 1-2 [Surveys from
Exile, pp. 35-94]
September 15: The
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte, chapters 1-3 [Surveys
from Exile, pp. 143-184]
September 29: The
Eighteenth Brumaire,
chapters 4-7 [Surveys from
Exile, pp. 184-249]
Meanwhile, I think you will
enjoy the recent film The
Young Karl Marx, which
covers the period just before
the 1848 revolutions. You can
watch it here:
http://putlockers.plus/watch/QvMynJv2-the-young-karl-marx.html. It’s perhaps a bit hokey in
some regards, but it will give
you some flavor of Marx and
Engels and their time.
[September 2, 2019]
Our second Marx meeting (yesterday) once again raised the much-debated question about the relation of Marx to supposedly “Marxist” regimes in the twentieth century. In my view, there is not much connection (Marx would certainly have been horrified by such regimes and would have vehemently opposed them), but I will admit that some of the rhetoric in the ten-point provisional program of the Communist Manifesto lends itself to such interpretation. In particular, the ambiguities about what Marx meant by “the State” in that earlier and rather speculative context made it possible for later “Communist” parties and regimes to conflate State/Party/Proletariat/People, so that totalitarian dictatorships could plausibly claim to be (or at least to represent) the Proletariat and/or the People. In any case, I think it is good that these issues where raised yesterday, even if it is unlikely that they will be definitively resolved — certainly not in such a brief sampling of such a small portion of Marx’s writings as we are doing.
Note: In addition to our already-assigned
political/historical texts, I
would also like us to look at a
shorter, earlier, and more “philosophical” essay by Marx: “Introduction to a Critique of
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”
(1844). Please download this
version —
www.bopsecrets.org/CF/marx-hegel.htm
— and bring it to the next two
meetings, where we will discuss
it in addition to the
Eighteenth Brumaire.
William Blake reading group
Dear Bay Area Friends,
Beginning October 13, I will be facilitating discussions of William Blake’s poetry. We will be reading the Songs of Innocence and of Experience and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell along with selections from Blake’s other poetry. I recommend The Portable Blake, edited by Alfred Kazin, but you are welcome to use any other edition you may already have. You can also view the marvelous original editions designed, engraved, and colored by Blake himself at the Blake Archive.
“Blake knew that his age was faced with a major crisis or climacteric of the interior life. He could diagnose the early symptoms of the world ill because he saw them as signs that man was being deprived of literally half his being. He is in fact concerned with the epic tragedy of mankind as it enters an epoch of depersonalization unequaled in history. . . . Blake was not only right about the spiritual, intangible factors of the struggles of the interior life and the achievement of true integration of the personality. He was also right about the external factors — the evils of the new factory system, of forced pauperism, of wage slavery, of child labor, and of the elevation of covetousness from the sin of the Tenth Commandment to the Golden Rule of a society founded on the cash nexus. A generation before the birth of Marx, and before Hegel, he put his finger unerringly on the source of human self-alienation. . . . Blake’s songs are distinguished by their uncanny lucidity. They are modeled on Shakespeare’s songs, and at first sight share their simplicity, but, rather like Shakespeare’s plays, on examination they reveal an ever-unfolding complexity of meaning. An ear for the subtlest music of language and an eye for the ultimate meanings of minute particulars combine to make Blake one of the greatest of all lyric poets. But what this means is seeing plainly into the clear depths of the soul — hence the inexhaustibility of these simple poems.” (Kenneth Rexroth)
[November 12, 2019]
Blake’s Prophetic Books
Our next and final Blake meeting will Sunday, November 24. At that meeting we will read and discuss the following selections from Blake’s Prophetic Books:
From
Jerusalem: “Blake’s Task,” “The Furnace and the Loom,” “The
Contraries,” and “Blake’s Motto” (Portable
Blake pp. 459-460)
The [First]
Book of Urizen (Portable
Blake pp. 328-347)
From The Four
Zoas: “Urizen’s Book
of Brass” (Portable
Blake pp. 392-393)
From The Four
Zoas: “The Bursting Universe,” “Mystery Is
No More,” and “The Sun
Has Left His Blackness”
(Portable Blake
pp. 403-409)
From
Jerusalem: “Los’s Hammer,” “The Eternal Circle,” “What God Is,”
and “The Breath Divine”
(Portable Blake
pp. 488-491)
If you don’t have The Portable Blake, just read The Book of Urizen and don’t worry about the other passages — we will read most of them aloud in any case.
You can see the original illustrated Book of Urizen here: www.blakearchive.org/copy/urizen.g?descId=urizen.g.illbk.01 (Click the little image to the right to go to the next page.)
Unless you have already done some study of Blake, much of this material is likely to seem strange and obscure. Don’t worry, just plunge in, and at the meeting we will endeavor to sort out what Mr. Blake is getting at!
Very roughly: Blake has envisioned a sort of Jungian mythology of archetypal characters (delineated in the chart I passed out during our previous meetings). Among them are the four “Zoas,” which represent the four fundamental aspects of Man: Tharmas (body/sensation), Urizen (reason), Luvah (passion/emotions), and Urthona (imagination/creativity). These four are “Eternals” (existing beyond space or time), but for some reason Urizen falls out from the others and so to speak heads out on his own, forgetting that he is intimately interrelated with the other Eternals. Becoming a sort of Jehovah-type personality, he creates his own Self-oriented world of space, time, matter, and duality, leading to laws, sin, etc. The other Eternals react against this disturbance, and in so doing they too become entangled in it. Urthona’s “earthly” form is Los, who embodies the prophetic/poetic aspect (like Blake himself). He combats Urizen’s acts and pretentions and binds and imprisons Urizen (one might have expected it to be the other way around) — but at the same time Urizen has also been doing this to himself, creating boundaries around himself and his world in his paranoid fear of the other Eternals. Meanwhile, Los has emanated from himself a female counterpart, Enitharmon. Their rather tumultuous relationship engenders a son, Orc (revolution). Following some oedipal hints, Los binds Orc (rather like Zeus bound Prometheus), but the repressed Orc remains a threat that Urizen fears, like a volcano that might explode at any time. (In some of Blake’s other early Prophetic Books, Orc personifies the outraged passion of the American and French revolutions.) . . . There are various versions of these archetypal epic conflicts in Blake’s Prophetic Books, but as hinted at in the above-assigned Four Zoas and Jerusalem passages, the four Zoas ultimately reunite as a holistic unity. Which does not mean that they are all merged into one homogenous blob. They are still “Contraries,” but they recognize themselves as interrelated contraries — a joyous community endlessly engaged in “generous contention.”
The above summary should be taken with a very large grain of salt — it’s just a brief attempt to orient you within this strange but profound vision of our world and of our selves. Group participant Lew Finzel has explored these matters in much greater depth than I have, and he (and perhaps some of the others participants who have also explored Blake at some length) will hopefully be able to provide more detailed clarifications.
[November 25, 2019]
Dear Blake group participants,
Thanks to all of you for making this an exciting and I hope illuminating series of meetings. As noted, these four meetings have just given a little taste of the vast world of Blake — there’s lots more there for those of you who are interested. Among other things:
Here is someone’s online “tour” of The Book of Urizen: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3a-nGF0q0g. I’m not sure about every aspect of the interpretation expressed there, but any interpretation may at least help us to get a better initial grasp of the work, even if we realize that there are many other possible ways of looking at it.
Here is Part 1 of an operatic version of The Book of Urizen by Jacob de Haan: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtmIZNbvnxI&feature=youtu.be.
Here is Rexroth’s Classics Revisited
essay on Blake —
www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/8.htm
— and here is another
briefer article on him, also by
Rexroth:
www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/blake.htm
Whitman reading group
Dear
Bay
Area
Friends,
Beginning
January
12
my
book
group
will
be
reading
and
discussing
Walt
Whitman’s
poetry.
Please
let
me
know
if
you’d
like
to
join
us.
“Only recently it was fashionable to dismiss Whitman as foolish and dated, a believer in the myth of progress and the preacher of an absurd patriotism. Today we know that it is Whitman’s vision or nothing. . . . Whitman’s vision is the last and greatest vision of the American potential. His democracy is utterly different from the society of free rational contractual relationships inaugurated by the French Revolution. It is a community of men related by organic satisfactions, in work, love, play, the family, comradeship — a social order whose essence is the liberation and universalization of selfhood. In all of Whitman’s many celebrations of labor, abstract relations are never mentioned. Money appears only to be scorned. Sailors, carpenters, longshoremen, bookkeepers, seamstresses, engineers, artists — all seem to be working for `nothing,’ participants in a universal creative effort in which each discovers his ultimate individuation. The day’s work over, they loaf and admire the world singly on summer hillsides, blowing on leaves of grass; or strolling the quiet First Day streets of Manhattan, arms about each other’s broad shoulders; or making love in religious ecstasy. . . . Although Whitman is a philosophical poet, almost always concerned with his message, he is at the same time a master of Blake’s ‘minute particulars,’ one of the clearest and most dramatic imagists in literature. Blake himself, in the philosophical-mythological epics in which he confronts the same problems and seeks the same solutions as Whitman, is graphic enough, but the details of his invented cosmogony are not sufficiently believable and so soon become boring. Whitman found his cosmogony under his heel, all about him in the most believable details of mundane existence. So his endless lists of the facts of life, which we expect to be tedious, are instead exhilarating, especially if read aloud. . . .” (Rexroth)
2020
[January 6, 2020]
Welcome to our Walt Whitman reading group. We will be meeting the 2nd and 4th Sundays from 4:30-7:00 p.m. in the University Press Bookstore, 2430 Bancroft in Berkeley, for four meetings (January 12 & 26, February 9 & 23), then we’ll move on to the next works in our “Exploring the Classics” series. Participation is free, but donations of $10 or so per meeting are suggested to help support the bookstore, which provides us with a pleasant meeting space and complimentary tea, wine, sandwiches, and cookies.
In answer to some queries:
1. I facilitate these explorations as a labor of love — the donations all go to the bookstore, which like most other bookstores these days faces an uphill struggle to stay in business. You may donate however much or little you feel is appropriate to your financial situation.
2. It is not necessary to attend all of the meetings. You are welcome to attend whenever you can.
3. It is not necessary to have done all the readings in advance. In our group we do a lot of reading aloud, and this will be particularly the case with Whitman. Although it is preferable to have done the readings ahead of time, you can show up with no preparation and still get into the poems and discussion. The first meeting will be mostly introductory, so I encourage you to attend it even if you haven’t yet got your copies of the books or done the readings.
4. I’m sending this message to those who have expressed interest in the group, and also to a few others who I’m hoping will take part but who haven’t gotten back to me yet. If you have not already done so, please let me know whether or not you will be joining us so I will know whether to keep you on the mailing list.
[January 14, 2020]
Chain reactions
Following our Whitman meeting last Sunday, Lisa sent me the following suggestion: “I had the thought that the bookstore could record these meetings, especially your intro talks, and put them online. It wouldn’t be too hard, I think, and great publicity.”
This was my response. I thought I’d also send it to you, since it may give you some idea of how I see these readings and meetings.
The idea of recording the UPB meetings has occasionally been suggested, but it has never been followed up. The main problem is that it would probably negatively impact the relaxedness and spontaneity of the discussions. It’s a rather different situation when the focus is on just one person (such as that City Lights event of mine that you attended a couple years ago, where I discussed the situationists and May 1968). My introductory remarks in the UPB group are not really that sort of thing. They are part of a discussion and a lot more informal than if I was giving a lecture at a podium.
So, short response: I doubt if it will happen, even if in retrospect you might think: “I wish I had that on video so I could show it to my friends or so it could generate some publicity for the bookstore.” Lots of things in our lives are like that and we just have to resign ourselves to the fact that most of them can’t be saved for posterity.
Also: For me the whole point of these gatherings and explorations is to spread these ideas and experiences around personally, from person to person. Ideally, the experience of being in the UPB group would inspire people to initiate their own similar groups or to do their own related explorations (literary or otherwise), which might then spread all over the place by chain reaction, making it much less crucial to preserve some particular talk or discussion. This is a more low-key example of the basic situationist notion that a radical text or action should aim at inspiring/inciting other similar actions (or, preferably, better actions! — actions that surpass and supersede the original action), rather than being treated as a supposedly special fetishized thing that people passively consume because they haven’t learned how to think and act for themselves.
[January 27, 2020]
Our next Whitman meeting will be Sunday, February 9. For that meeting, please read the following poems from Leaves of Grass:
“There Was a Child Went Forth”
“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”
“Song of the Open Road”
“A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest”
“The Wound-Dresser”
“Long, Too Long America”
“I Sit and Look Out”
“You Felons on Trial in Courts”
“To a Foil’d European Revolutionary”
“Proud Music”
As at the last meeting, we will be doing a lot of reading aloud. It is not necessary for anyone to read anything aloud if they don’t feel like it, but if the spirit moves you, please let me know ahead of time if there is some particular poem, or some passage from a poem, that you would like to read to the group. Feel free to give alternatives, in case several people choose the same poem. (In the case of the longer poems, we will in any case spread them among several readers.)
If you decide that you would like to read a poem to the group, try to become familiar enough with it that you know how to phrase it as you read it. Practice reading it out loud until you feel really comfortable with it, so you feel that you are expressing yourself, not just reading someone else’s work.
Here is the link to the commentaries on “Song of Myself” that I
mentioned yesterday:
https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en/writings/song-of-myself/section-1. Each section has a
Foreword, then the poem,
then an Afterword. Click
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and then click the “Update” button.
Baudelaire reading group
Dear Bay Area Friends,
Beginning March 8 my book group will be reading and discussing selections from Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil. We will be meeting every other Sunday for four meetings. Please let me know if you’d like to join us.
You do NOT have to know any French to take part. We will be examining selected Baudelaire poems in both French and English, comparing various translations in order to get a sense of the meaning and feeling of the original. The group will also include two or three French women who will help us understand the original contexts and nuances.
Note that we will be reading other French poets and listening to French songs for the rest of 2020. After Baudelaire we will be doing four meetings on Rimbaud, then five meetings on a survey of other great French poets (Mallarmé, Apollinaire, etc.), then seven meetings on great French singers and songwriters (Edith Piaf, Charles Trenet, Georges Brassens, Anne Sylvestre, etc.). I encourage you to get in at the start of what promises to be an exciting series!
“Baudelaire was the greatest poet of the capitalist epoch. And yet — my God, what a wretched fellow he was! But more than any other poet for two hundred years he communicated. He speaks directly to each of us like a twin brother. He defined and gave expression to all the dilemmas of modern man, caught in the cruel dynamic of an acquisitive and continually disintegrating society that is a deadly fraud from start to finish. He is the founder of the modern sensibility. Some learn to cope with this sensibility. He was at its mercy, because he embodied it totally. He lived in a permanent crisis of the moral nervous system. His conviction that social relationships were one immense lie was physiological. The tragic hero of the modern metropolis, he enables us to endure a predicament we understand only too well with at least some kind of dignity.” (Rexroth)
[February 24, 2020]
Welcome to our Baudelaire reading group! Our first meeting will be March 8. We will be reading selected poems from Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil in both the original French and in various English translations. (Don’t worry, you do NOT have to know any French to take part in these gatherings!) We will mostly be using the little bilingual anthology Flowers of Evil: A Selection (New Directions). The store has ordered copies of this book and they should be available for you to purchase at our first meeting.
You will not need the book before then, because at our first meeting we will be focusing on just one webpage: www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/baudelaire.htm. Please print out that entire webpage and bring it to the first meeting (March 8). It presents Baudelaire’s poem “Le Balcon” (“The Balcony”) followed by 23 (!) different English translations. Addressed to Baudelaire’s mistress, Jeanne Duval, this is one of the most beautiful poems of one of the world’s greatest poets. I suggest that you first read one of the literal prose translations near the top of the webpage, then look at the original French to see how it matches that literal version, then browse among the various verse translations to compare their (usually not very successful) attempts to express the same meaning/feeling in poetic English. At the meeting we will go into all this in much greater detail. This should enable us to get a more intimate sense of this poem, and also a keener sense of the difficulties of poetic translation.
Meanwhile, here is a reading of the original French poem: www.youtube.com/watch?v=g33koEcRZfY&feature=youtu.be
Here’s another that is a bit more dramatic: https://fleursdumal.org/audio/treize_poemes/07_le_balcon.mp3
And here is the same poem put to music by Debussy: www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4jIHINdrkM&feature=youtu.be
Please savor them
and then join us on
March 8 for further
investigation!
[March 12, 2020]
Book group suspended
Dear Book Group Friends,
On the
recommendation
of the State of
California, the
University Press
Bookstore is
canceling all of
its reading
groups and other
events that
bring groups of
people into
close contact
with each other.
I think this is
a good idea, not
only for our own
sakes, but
because it is
becoming
increasingly
evident that
such risks,
though perhaps
individually
small,
collectively
have the
potential to
affect the
health of others
in the community
and the ultimate
control of the
disease. The
corona virus
will inevitably
spread to large
numbers of
people, but
practicing
“social
distancing”
along with other
hygiene
recommendations
may slow the
spread so as not
to overwhelm the
medical response
facilities while
we await the
development of
vaccines or
other
treatments.
So our UPB
classics group
will be
discontinued
until further
notice.
It has been
suggested that
we could shift
our group
discussions to
an online
conferencing
format. I know
nothing about
such things, but
my initial
feeling is not
to bother with
them right now.
However, if
several weeks go
by and it starts
looking like
this will be an
indefinitely
ongoing
situation, then
maybe we can
look into such a
workaround.
I’ve very much
enjoyed the
experiences
we’ve had
together over
the last several
years around the
beloved Big
Table in the
back of the
store, and hope
that we can
resume them in
the near future.
Meanwhile, I
hope I will
continue to see
some of you in
smaller, more
manageable
contexts (lunch,
dinner, coffee,
hikes in Tilden,
etc.).
As I write this,
it occurs to me
that I might
continue with
some literary
email
communications,
such as
recommended
readings and
comments on
them. I’ll think
about this and
let you know.
Feel free to let
me know any
thoughts you may
have on these
issues.
Meanwhile,
please take care
of yourselves
and those around
you!
Ken
[June 16, 2020]
University Press Bookstore
Dear Book Group Friends,
Bill McClung just sent out this announcement:
Our Bookstore — University Press Books/Berkeley — closed in February and we surrendered our lease last month. We have been unable to afford the $10,000/month rental costs for several years. We can continue to sell our c.$300,000 inventory online and we have an opportunity to house business operations at Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services in Oakland. We may reopen a retail space in a smaller space in about a year. What a relief this is! Hope you are all doing as well.
Bill
William J. McClung
President, the 2430 Arts Alliance
General Partner, University Press Books/Berkeley
General Partner, the Musical Offering & Cafe
2430 Bancroft Way
Berkeley, CA 94704
UPB was a
significant
Berkeley
cultural
institution for
nearly fifty
years. For me
personally, as
for many of you,
it was
particularly
important as a
meeting place
for various book
groups in that
cozy back room
with the Big
Table where we
had countless
lively
discussions
accompanied with
tasty snacks and
wine.
I have mixed
feelings about
the closing.
It’s sad to
think of losing
that great
location, but,
like Bill, I’m
also relieved —
it just didn’t
seem very likely
that the store
could continue
to cover such
high ongoing
expenses, even
if donations or
an occasional
windfall paid
the bills for a
few months. I’m
sure it was very
stressful for
Bill and the
other people who
worked there.
I’m planning on
resuming my “Exploring the
Classics” group
via Zoom. (More
on that soon.)
We’ll see how
that works, then
hopefully segue
to some other
in-person
location
whenever that
becomes
possible. But it
will be unlikely
to match the old
Big Table room!
For now, I’d
like to thank
Bill and Karen
McClung and all
the other folks
at UPB who made
possible this
wonderful
meeting place
for nearly half
a century.
Best,
Ken
[June 21, 2020]
Baudelaire group resuming via Zoom
Dear Bay Area Friends,
As most of you know, I’ve been leading a book discussion group (“Exploring the Classics”) for the last 4+ years at University Press Bookstore in Berkeley. The corona pandemic has led to the closing of the bookstore, which had already been struggling financially for many years.
Here are two articles about that closing that recently appeared in Berkeleyside: www.berkeleyside.com/2020/06/17/a-46-year-old-berkeley-bookstore-closes-another-covid-19-casualty and in The Daily Californian: www.dailycal.org/2020/06/18/more-than-just-a-workplace-university-press-books-to-close-after-46-years/.
Our book group has been suspended since mid-March due to the pandemic. I hope that we can eventually resume it at some other suitable in-person location (perhaps at someone’s large home, or at some café or other public space). But while we’re waiting for that to become safe and feasible, I’m going to resume the group via Zoom.
I plan to continue the same multiyear program I outlined a couple years ago, tentatively with the same every-other-Sunday schedule. The first meeting will be Sunday, July 5, 4:30-7:00 p.m., followed by three more meetings July 19, August 2, and August 16.
The first half hour (4:30-5:00) will be informal socializing plus dealing with any technical issues. The discussion will start at 5:00. I’m just learning to use Zoom, so I will probably have someone else actually running the technical end. If you have never used Zoom, you will first need to go to https://zoom.us/ and sign up. It’s free and very simple. Then, some time before the meeting, I will send you a specific Zoom link. Clicking that link will connect you to the meeting, where you will be able to see and hear all the other participants. If you have any problems, I or someone else should be able to walk you through it.
Although our in-person meetings were naturally limited to Bay Area people, I’m also sending this message to a number of out-of-town friends who I think may like to take part now that we’re going to be on Zoom.
These meetings will be totally free. We will be picking up where we left off in March, with Selected Poems of Baudelaire. We had one Baudelaire meeting before we were obliged to stop, but since that was several months ago and some people may be joining us who weren’t at that earlier meeting, our July 5 meeting will be mostly introductory. We will briefly introduce ourselves, I will give a few remarks about Baudelaire’s life, and then we can look at two or three of his poems. We will be reading the poems both in the original French and in various English translations. Don’t worry, no French knowledge is necessary.
Please let me know if you’d like to join us for these four Baudelaire meetings. I’ll be letting you know about the particular readings (which can be found online if you don’t have print editions) later this week.
Cheers,
Ken Knabb
Baudelaire Poems (first meeting)
Welcome to our Baudelaire reading group via Zoom! We will be reading selected poems from Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil both in the original French and in various English translations. Don’t worry, you do NOT have to know any French to take part in these gatherings!
I recommend that you get a print edition that includes both the French and English, such as Flowers of Evil: A Selection (New Directions, ed. Mathews) OR Baudelaire: Selected Verse with Prose Translations by Francis Scarfe (Penguin). There are many other editions, selected or complete. However, you don’t actually have to have any print volume, since I’ll be linking to various online sites that have both the French originals and various translations.
Before our in-person meetings were suspended due to the coronavirus, we had one Baudelaire meeting back in early March in the fondly remembered University Press Bookstore. But since it’s been a while and some of you were not at that meeting, we’re going to go through much of the same material in our first Zoom meeting.
If you have not used Zoom before, you will first need to go to https://zoom.us/ and sign up. It’s free and very simple. Then, a day or two before the meeting, I will send you a Zoom link for our specific meeting. Clicking that link will connect you to the meeting, where you will be able to see and hear all the other participants. If you have any problems, I or someone else should be able to walk you through it to get you connected.
If you are new to Zoom, please check in around 4:00 p.m. so we’ll have extra time to get any problems worked out.
From 4:00-5:00 we will first get everyone connected via Zoom, then have informal chatting in whatever time remains before 5:00. At 5:00 I will give some introductory remarks about Baudelaire’s life and times, and then we will closely examine one webpage: www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/baudelaire.htm. Please print out that entire webpage so you can consult it as we’re talking about it. It presents Baudelaire’s poem “Le Balcon” (”The Balcony”) followed by 23 (!) different English translations. Addressed to Baudelaire’s mistress, Jeanne Duval, this is one of the most beautiful poems of one of the world’s greatest poets. I suggest that you first read one of the literal prose translations near the top of the webpage, then look at the original French to see how it matches that literal version, then browse among the various verse translations to compare their (usually not very successful) attempts to express the same meaning/feeling in poetic English. At the meeting we will go into all this in much greater detail. This should enable us to get a more intimate sense of this poem, and also a keener sense of the difficulties of poetic translation.
Meanwhile, here is a reading of the original French poem: www.youtube.com/watch?v=g33koEcRZfY&feature=youtu.be
Here’s another that is a bit more dramatic: https://fleursdumal.org/audio/treize_poemes/07_le_balcon.mp3
And here is the same poem put to music by Debussy: www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4jIHINdrkM&feature=youtu.be
Please savor them and then join us on July 5 for further investigation!
Cheers,
Ken
[July 28, 2020]
R.I.P. Bill McClung
Dear Bay Area Literary Friends,
I’m sorry to inform you that our dear friend Bill McClung has died. Those of you who have been in my book groups will be quite familiar with him. Others of you who never met him may have visited the bookstore that he cofounded.
Bill was a founding partner of University Press Bookstore (UPB) in Berkeley. He also worked many years as an editor for the University of California Press. The bookstore recently closed. It had been struggling financially for the last several years, and the corona crisis made it impossible to continue. Just as that was happening (March-April of this year), Bill had a stroke. He seemed to be recovering fairly well during the last couple months, but the stroke and other health issues finally were too much. He was in his early eighties.
I first met Bill eight years ago when my Zen friend Patrick McMahon started a group study of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, which met around the Big Table that Bill had had specially built to fit into the cozy back room of the bookstore. The Proust group lasted four years, followed by four years of my “Exploring the Classics” group (which is currently continuing via Zoom), along with a number of other groups (Bob Meyer’s two-year exploration of Joyce’s Ulysses, Lois Potter’s and Joel Altman’s Shakespeare readings, Brenda Hillman’s Emily Dickinson group, etc.), in addition to countless author appearances, panels on various topics, “slow reading” dinners, etc. During its nearly half-century of existence, the store functioned as a wonderful community cultural center — and Bill McClung was at the heart of it the whole time. He attended most of the events and took part in many of the ongoing groups, in addition to making sure that we were always supplied with an abundance of wines, along with tasty sandwiches and ginger cookies from the nextdoor Musical Offering Café (with which he was also closely associated, and which is currently continuing to operate by offering gourmet dinners to go).
Bill was particularly fond of reading aloud. After we had gotten into one of our lively but sometimes excessively drawn-out debates about some aspect of Proust or Montaigne or Whitman, he would often chime in: “Let’s get back to some more reading aloud!”
When UPB partners, employees, and friends debated the future of the store, Bill was always the most fervent and optimistic, continually working to elicit more donations or to explore more ideas for reviving and improving the institution that he and others (notably including his wife Karen, who retired a year or two ago after 43 years of working for the store) had worked so hard to maintain. But while the occasional large donation or windfall might postpone the reckoning for a few more months, it was becoming increasingly clear that the store could not continue. The corona crisis was the last nail in the coffin. But I think it was also a relief for Bill. He had done what he could, but now the decision was clear. He could stop worrying about the impossibly high rent, wind down the store’s operation (arranging to sell off the inventory online from a much cheaper location in Oakland), and finally relax.
The friend who informed me of his death said, “He expressed hope, over these last few days, to see the University Press Bookstore movement continue in some form.” Maintaining an actual bookstore is extremely difficult these days, but I do believe that the hundreds of thousands of quality books that UPB sold, and the countless conversations about books and ideas among storeclerks and customers, and the countless reading groups, forums, author appearances, and other events that the store hosted over the last 44 years have already inspired, and will continue to inspire, kindred expressions of the scholarly and humanistic ideals that Bill McClung loved and embodied.
—Ken Knabb
[August 17, 2020]
Baudelaire recommended readings
At our final Baudelaire meeting yesterday some participants asked for a list of recommended readings. Here are some books you might want to look into if you wish to explore more:
Baudelaire, The Complete Verse (French, with prose translations by Francis Scarfe). This is basic, even if you have other more poetic translations.
Baudelaire, Paris Spleen: Prose Poems (trans. Louise Varèse)
Baudelaire, The Mirror of Art: Critical Studies by Baudelaire (ed./trans. Jonathan Mayne). Includes all of his detailed reviews of art salons, with penetrating analyses of Delacroix, Courbet, etc.
Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (ed./trans. Jonathan Mayne). Includes essays on Poe, Wagner, and “The Philosophy of Toys.”
Baudelaire, Intimate Journals (trans. Christopher Isherwood)
Walter Starkie, Baudelaire. A standard biography
Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism
Henri Peyre (ed.), Baudelaire: A Collection of Critical Essays
Martin Turnell, Baudelaire: A Study of His Poetry. Good comprehensive analysis.
Clive Scott, Translating Baudelaire. Pretty dense, but useful if you want to really get into the nuances.
Kenneth Rexroth, “Baudelaire’s Poems” (Classics Revisited essay) — www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/9.htm [The same webpage also includes essays on Whitman, Flaubert, and Rimbaud.]
Kenneth Rexroth, “Baudelaire’s Ennobling Revulsion” (review of Baudelaire’s Selected Letters) — www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/baudelaire.htm
Rimbaud reading group
Dear Bay Area Friends,
Beginning August 30 my book group will be exploring the explosive life and writings of Arthur Rimbaud. We will meet via Zoom every other Sunday from 4:30-7:00 p.m. for four meetings (August 30, September 13, September 27, October 11), then we’ll move on to the next works in our series. Participation is free. Please let me know if you’d like to join us.
You do not have to know any French to take part. We will be examining selected Rimbaud works in both French and English, comparing various translations in order to get a sense of the meaning and feeling of the original. A good collection is Rimbaud: Complete Works & Selected Letters, translated by Wallace Fowlie, but there are many other editions that can be ordered online or found at libraries and bookstores. In fact, you don’t actually even have to have a print edition to take part — we will mostly be referring to texts that are available online.
“Rimbaud tried to do to and with poetry what others only pretended to be able to do. Poetry has never recovered. . . . Baudelaire may have founded modern poetry, but his work is assimilable to the past. With Rimbaud, the connections are snapped. The only poetry like Rimbaud’s is to be found amongst primitive peoples who believe as did the boy Rimbaud, really and truly, that the poet is an all-powerful shaman and seer, capable of altering the very nature of reality. . . . What did Rimbaud accomplish in poetry? He developed, refined, and pushed to its final forms the basic technique of all verse that has been written since in the idiom of international modernism — the radical disassociation, analysis, and recombination of all the material elements of poetry. The logical pattern of Western European thought and language begins to break down. The basic form — subject, verb, object, and their modifiers — dissolves. More important by far, however, the ultimate materials, psychological, descriptive, dramatic — the things the poetry is ‘about’ — are shattered beyond recognition and recombined into forms that establish the conviction of a new and different order of reality. . . . To achieve the dissolution and dissociation of all the elements of poetry, it was necessary for Rimbaud to undertake a forced dissociation of the personality — under the strict control of a powerful will and reason. This is the ‘reasoned derangement of the senses’ which has become a byword of all modern art. . . . Rimbaud did not see the Absolute, or try to become an angel, or any of the other things his worshipers attribute to him. He very simply tried to take the pretensions of poetry seriously and to reform art so that it could alter the experienced meaning of reality. He decided that this was a hoax and an activity beneath the dignity of grown men, and he turned to what he considered more interesting activities. However, he almost succeeded, and poetry will never be the same again.” (Rexroth)
[August 25, 2020]
Welcome to our Rimbaud discussion group!
For our first meeting (August 30), please read the following:
Excerpts from Rimbaud’s “Lettre du Voyant” (letter on the poet as seer/visionary). An English translation is attached.
“Ma Bohème” (My Bohemia/My Vagabond Life). Here is the French text followed by one of the innumerable translations: https://emilyspoetryblog.com/2013/02/17/ma-boheme-by-arthur-rimbaud/
And here is a charming British woman reading the original followed by her own translation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RMd5ipAlX8
“Le Bateau Ivre” (The Drunken Boat). Here is the French version: www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Bateau.html.
And here is Wallace Fowlie’s translation: www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55036/the-drunken-boat
Please
savor these
volatile
little works
and join us
for further
exploration!
[August 31, 2020]
Our second Rimbaud meeting (via Zoom) will be September 13. At that meeting we will be discussing Rimbaud’s short autobiographical work, A Season in Hell. Various translations of this work can be found in print or online. I have attached a PDF of Rimbaud: Complete Works and Selected Letters, translated by Wallace Fowlie (A Season in Hell is on pages 264-305). Because the print work is bilingual, every other page is in French.
Here is another translation of the same text online: www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/French/Rimbaud3.php
Meanwhile, here are some links to dozens of video versions, in many cases illustrated, animated, and/or set to music (including jazz, rock, and rap), of the two poems we read at yesterday’s meeting:
www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Rimbaud%3A+Ma+Boheme
www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rimbaud+drunken+boat+
I
recommend
that you set
aside an
hour or two
and explore
these very
varied
versions.
Some are
perhaps more
successful
than others,
but the
ensemble may
give you a
better idea
of the
richness of
the ideas
and images
in the two
poems.
[September 3, 2020]
Rimbaud recommended readings
Some participants have asked for recommended Rimbaud readings.
Here are some of the different translations of his works:
Rimbaud, Complete Works & Selected Letters, trans. by Wallace Fowlie
Rimbaud, Rimbaud: The Works, trans. by Dennis Carlile
Rimbaud, Collected Poems, trans. by Oliver Bernard
Rimbaud, Complete Works, trans. by Paul Schmidt
Rimbaud, Collected Poems, trans. by Martin Sorrell
Rimbaud, Rimbaud Complete, trans. by Wyatt Mason
There are also numerous editions of specific works, especially Illuminations and A Season in Hell, trans. by Louise Varèse, Stanley Appelbaum, A.S. Kline, Bertrand Mathieu, Andrew Jary, etc.
As with Baudelaire (and with the other French poets we’ll be reading later this year), I encourage you to get a bilingual edition, so that you can at least glance at the original French and be reminded to take any translation with a large grain of salt.
Books about Rimbaud are numerous and varied — many authors have been so mind-blown by Rimbaud that they tend to read into him their own youthful struggles and experiences and thereby foster a real mystique about him. Here are some that I’ve come upon (though I have not read all of them):
Enid Starkie, Arthur Rimbaud. This is probably the closest thing to a “standard” biography.
Jean-Luc Steinmetz, Arthur Rimbaud: Presence of an Enigma. This goes into greater detail about his later adventures in Africa.
Graham Robb, Rimbaud: A Biography.
Seth Whidden, Rimbaud: A Critical Biography.
Edmund White, Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel.
Charles Nicholl, Somebody Else: Arthur Rimbaud in Africa 1880-1891.
Bruce Duffy, Disaster Was My God: A Novel of the Outlaw Life of Arthur Rimbaud.
Barbara Scott-Emmett, Delirium: The Rimbaud Delusion (another novel).
Wallace Fowlie, Rimbaud and Jim Morrison: The Rebel as Poet.
Henry Miller, The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud. A very lively little book, though it is as much about Miller as about Rimbaud.
Robert Greer Cohn, The Poetry of Rimbaud. A detailed study of each poem and of A Season in Hell.
Kenneth Rexroth, “Rimbaud” — www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/9.htm. An essay from Classics Revisited. The same webpage also includes Rexroth essays on Baudelaire, Flaubert, and Whitman.
Kenneth Rexroth, “Rimbaud as Capitalist Adventurer” — www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/rimbaud.htm. Another even briefer essay, provocatively challenging the Rimbaud mystique.
[October
3, 2020]
Rimbaud and Stan Brakhage
Dear Rimbaudians,
Thanks to all the participants for an invigorating and gratifying final Rimbaud meeting last Sunday. For those who weren’t there: I shared a few minutes of clips from a Stan Brakhage film (see below), then read passages from André Breton, Henry Miller, and Kenneth Rexroth about Rimbaud. After some discussion of those clips and comments, we then shifted to each participant making some personal statement about Rimbaud. The statements were very diverse, often impassioned, and sometimes unexpected.
When we had at previous meetings discussed Rimbaud’s genius for evoking the primal sense of childhood, when the senses are still fresh but also confused (because not yet ordered into conventional unities and differences), I was reminded of Scenes from Under Childhood, a film by Stan Brakhage, one of the great avant-garde filmmakers of his era (50+ years ago). I shared a few clips to the group, but here is the whole film (two 12-minute parts): www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfXHoQUzaGg
The YouTube introduction may help to set the context:
Scenes from Under Childhood by Stan Brakhage is an attempt to imagine fetal seeing and hearing. From this haze a child emerges in fuzzy halo superimposed on images of Brakhage himself. The experimental investigation about the hypnagogic hallucinations achieves in this film a climax that Brakhage masters in amazing editing of glimpses, rapid montage, use of black or clear ladder, superimpositions, time lapse, flicker, in-camera editing, jump cuts, hand-held camera... “What we call ‘closed-eye vision’ is for me the template in the mind upon which all further formative envisionment is to occur,” Brakhage was used to say. So, in evoking a purely sensory “knowledge,” opposed to the conceptual one, the images, often vague, blurry, distorted, even messy, easily call to mind the treatment of space by color-field abstraction (Rothko over all). The bliss of red flickering glows and mesmerizing floating balloons is what Rimbaud called inner light, a vision captured by a fingers massage on the closed eyelids: a sort of childhood’s “vision in meditation” . . .
French Poetry discussion group
Dear Friends,
During the last few months my book group (via Zoom) has been exploring two major French poets, Baudelaire and Rimbaud. Beginning October 25 we will continue with briefer examinations of Nerval, Lautréamont, Mallarmé, Apollinaire, Breton, and several other great French poets, whose creations and innovations have dramatically impacted subsequent writers all over the world. In Gateway to the Vast Realms I briefly described them as follows:
French Poetry 1850-1950
With the exception of Villon, early French poetry has never impassioned most foreign readers. But beginning around 1850 it really takes off — no other country can claim so many consistently great poets during the following hundred years, and many of them resonate with readers all over the world even in translation. Victor Hugo, Gérard de Nerval, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Isidore Ducasse (Lautréamont), Tristan Corbière, Jules Laforgue, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Valéry, Blaise Cendrars, Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Pierre Reverdy, André Breton, Antonin Artaud, O.V. de Lubicz-Milosz, Léon-Paul Fargue, Francis Carco, Pierre Mac Orlan, Jules Supervielle, Henri Michaux, and Jacques Prévert are among the most notable, but there are many others.
Baudelaire is the source and inspiration of virtually all the poets who came after him. In one sense he (along with Nerval and Hugo) can be seen as the culmination of the Romantic movement, but he also began the revolt against it. The succeeding currents went in many different directions. Verlaine exemplified the more traditional lyrical tendency, Rimbaud and Lautréamont the most innovative and apocalyptical. Corbière and Laforgue developed new forms of ironic detachment that were later adopted by T.S. Eliot. Mallarmé was a pioneer of “art for art’s sake” aesthetic subtlety, seeking an ideal of pure poetry; Valéry carried on a similar quest but in a more cerebral manner. Apollinaire heralded the modern age with poems on contemporary urban life in a new style influenced by the dissociative techniques of cubist art. Reverdy represents a more stark, intense, interior form of “poetic cubism.”
Many of these poets challenged the limits of literary art, at one extreme by abandoning it (Rimbaud), others by pushing the envelope of poetic content or form, sometimes in a violent and explicitly revolutionary manner like Breton and the other surrealists, sometimes in a more psychological or spiritual manner, sometimes in both at once. Nerval, the explorer of dreams, and Artaud, the explorer of himself, both ended up going insane. Max Jacob (Picasso’s pal) and Lubicz-Milosz (a Lithuanian exile) were both mystics of sorts, the first more whimsical, the second more somber. Cendrars (greatly admired by his friend Henry Miller, whom he somewhat resembled) wrote poems that are expansive and Whitmanesque. Michaux explored the world of “inner space,” sometimes with the aid of psychedelics. Supervielle gently celebrated the outer world of nature, animals, and the simple things of life. Carco and Fargue were noted for their nostalgic evocation of now-vanished Parisian ambiences. Mac Orlan went farther afield (Gypsies, sailors, distant voyages). His poems, like those of many of the others, have been set to music. Some of Prévert’s have even become internationally popular songs (e.g. “Autumn Leaves”). Such crossovers between highbrow and pop are not unusual in France, which has a long tradition of popular songs with high-quality poetic lyrics, from nineteenth-century cabaret singers to great post-World War II poet-singers like Georges Brassens, Jacques Brel, Léo Ferré, Félix Leclerc, and Anne Sylvestre.
We will be reading and discussing these poets via Zoom every other Sunday from 4:30-7:00 p.m. for five meetings (October 25, November 8 and 22, December 6 and 20), then we’ll move on to the next works in our series.
Participation
is free, and
you do not
have to know
any French
to take
part. We
will be
examining
selected
poems by
these
authors in
both French
and English,
comparing
various
translations
in order to
get a sense
of the
meaning and
feeling of
the
originals. Let me
know if
you’d like
to join us!
[October 12, 2020]
Nerval and Lautréamont
Welcome to our French Poets discussion group! While we previously allotted four meetings each to Blake, Whitman, Baudelaire, and Rimbaud, for this series we are going to touch much more briefly on several other marvelous French poets — just enough to give you a little taste of each.
We will be meeting via Zoom every other Sunday from 4:30-7:00 p.m. for five meetings, as follows:
Oct. 25: Nerval and Lautréamont
Nov. 8: Verlaine and Mallarmé
Nov. 22: Apollinaire and Cendrars
Dec. 6: Reverdy, Breton, Artaud, Michaux
Dec. 20: Carco, Fargue, Lubicz-Milocz, Supervielle
As I did with Baudelaire and Rimbaud, during our meetings I will also be sharing a number of YouTube versions of these works — readings, songs, dramatic adaptations, animations, and even a few brief film clips of some of the later authors.
Participation is free, and you do not have to know any French to take part. We will be briefly examining selected works by these poets in both French and English, comparing diverse translations in order to get a sense of the meaning and feeling of the original.
Please get a copy of The Penguin Book of French Poetry 1820-1950 (ed. William Rees). But don’t worry: most of the texts we will be reading are also available online if you are unable to get a copy in time for the first meeting.
At our first meeting (October 25) we will be exploring Gérard de Nerval (1808-1855) and Isidore Ducasse (Comte de Lautréamont) (1846-1870). In their very different ways both of these authors were major forerunners of surrealism. Please read the following:
Nerval: “Vers dorés” (Gilded Verses) [Rees p. 78]
Nerval: “El Desdichado” (The Disinherited One) [Rees pp. 79-80]
Lautréamont: Maldoror (excerpt from “Hymn 2”) [Rees pp. 267-271]
At the meeting I will also be reading to you a few other excerpts from both authors that are not included in the Rees anthology.
“El Desdichado” is a very dense poem, packed with obscure and often occult allusions. Don’t worry, these will be explained, or at least discussed, at the meeting; but if you would like to do some advance investigation, this webpage includes some pretty detailed notes on the poem: https://everything2.com/title/El+Desdichado
This is a very small amount of “homework”! If you have the time, I suggest that you also read some of the other works by these two authors included in the Rees anthology, and perhaps do a little background exploration on the Web (Wikipedia articles, etc.).
[October 26, 2020]
Nerval and Lautréamont additional readings
I thought our first French Poets meeting yesterday went very well. But as I stressed, this series is VERY condensed — covering 14 poets in five meetings — so at best it can provide only a brief taste of these poets’ works. So in each case I will provide some advance orientation for upcoming meetings plus follow-up resources afterwards.
Nerval:
Gérard de Nerval: Selected Writings, translated and edited by Geoffrey Wagner (an excellent anthology, including three short prose works — Sylvie, Emilie, and Aurélia — plus selected poems)
Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9rard_de_Nerval
”El Desdichado” notes and analysis: https://everything2.com/title/El+Desdichado
Another “El Desdichado” analysis: https://sesquipadalianmusings.blogspot.com/2009/09/el-desdichado-translation.html
Seven variations on “El Desdichado”: https://adventuresintheprinttrade.blogspot.com/2010/06/seven-variants-on-el-desdichado.html
An illustrated reading of “El Desdichado”:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzfhAYGxyZo
A musical interpretation of “El Desdichado”:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5y0QOwGKIo
Wikipedia article on Dürer’s Melencolia (alluded to in “El Desdichado” and Aurélia):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melencolia_I
A lecture on “El Desdichado” and Aurélia:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxJiwPGW9VE
(This one-hour lecture by Agnès Spiquel is in French, but it is very
clear and lucid, so you can probably follow much of it even if you know
little or no French.
Ducasse/Lautréamont:
Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comte_de_Lautr%C3%A9amont
Lautréamont: Maldoror, translated by Alexis Lykiard (the best translator)
Isidore Ducasse: Poésies and Complete Miscellanea, translated by Alexis Lykiard
Maldoror and the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautréamont (combines the above two volumes
into one)
“Maldoror Is Not Surrealism”:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVYBrX3SpMA (reading of a Maldoror passage with comments on the fact that it is not
“automatic writing” as advocated by the Surrealists)
[October 27, 2020]
Verlaine and Mallarmé
The next meeting of our French Poets series will be Sunday, November 8. At that meeting we will be examining Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) and Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898). Please read the following:
Verlaine: “En sourdine” (Muted) [Rees p. 231]
Verlaine: “Il pleure dans mon coeur” (There is weeping in my heart) [Rees pp. 234-235]
Verlaine: “Art poétique” (The Art of Poetry) [Rees pp. 241-243]
Mallarmé: “L’après-midi d’un faune” (Afternoon of a Faun) [Rees pp. 197-204]
Actually, we will only briefly discuss Verlaine (whose poems are pretty accessible), because I want to spend most of our meeting on the more lengthy and complex Mallarmé work we will be examining: “Afternoon of a Faun.”
If you don’t have the Rees anthology, here is the original French of “L’après-midi d’un faune”: https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Po%C3%A9sies_(Mallarm%C3%A9,_1914,_8e_%C3%A9d.)/L%E2%80%99Apr%C3%A8s-Midi_d%E2%80%99un_faune
And here is an English translation by A.S. Kline: www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/French/Mallarme.php#anchor_Toc223495077. (I will later let you know about various other translations/editions that you may want to get.)
I have not been able to find a good online commentary on “Afternoon of a Faun,” but I have two books that include fairly extensive commentaries, of which I will be trying to absorb as much as possible so that I can explain to you at least some of what is going on. Meanwhile, just read this exquisite poem slowly, in both English and French, and get what you can of the flavor without worrying too much that a lot of it will remain vague or confusing.
Suffice it to say that the poem is the dream and/or daydream of a faun (a Greco-Roman mythological figure, half-goat, half-man, like the nature god Pan) who in a lazy afternoon in ancient Sicily sees two nymphs — or thinks he sees them and perhaps remembers dallying with them, but they disappear and he wonders if it all may have been just a dream. As with Mallarmé’s other poems, the poem hints at various possibilities rather than describing a definite reality.
For this reason, many critics, including Mallarmé himself, felt that Debussy’s beautiful musical adaptation was perhaps the best entryway to the poem. So please also check out these versions of Debussy’s piece as well as Nijinsky’s ballet version:
Debussy’s Prelude à l’après-midi d’un faune:
Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pr%C3%A9lude_%C3%A0_l%27apr%C3%A8s-midi_d%27un_faune
Performance with colored shapes:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YazhxBA7oo
Performance directed by Georges Prêtre:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SHBek8BONQ
Performance directed by Leonard Bernstein:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvnRC7tSX50
Lecture on the piece by Bernstein (two 10-minute parts):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOlzpfE8bUk and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4L59BT5yeI
Ballet choreographed by Nijinsky:
Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afternoon_of_a_Faun_(Nijinsky)
Joffrey Ballet with Nureyev:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GqGVkfUip8
Ballets Russes (similar to the above, but better visually):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_LrFJsgmJc
Immerse yourself in the poem and its musical spinoffs without worrying too much about precisely what it means — and we will delve into that at our meeting!
[November 10, 2020]
Verlaine and Mallarmé additional readings
Following our Mallarmé-Verlaine meeting a couple days ago, here are some bibliographical references:
Mallarmé: Collected Poems, translated with extensive commentary by Henry Weinfield. This very handsome bilingual volume presents good poetic translations of all Mallarmé’s major work (including a nice layout of
“A Throw of the Dice”), along with helpful commentary on each poem. For all those reasons, this may be the best single volume to get if you want to go more into Mallarmé. But the following are also good.
Mallarmé: Selected Poems, translated by C.F. MacIntyre
Mallarmé: The Poems, translated by Keith Bosley
Robert Greer Cohn, Toward the Poems of Mallarmé. Detailed analyses by the same guy who analyzed all of Rimbaud’s poems.
Gordon Millan, Throw of the Dice: The Life of Stéphane Mallarmé
Guy Michaud, Mallarmé (another biographical study)
Here is a interesting reading (French with English subtitles) of “Un coup de dés”: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMdNjrUy-fg
There are numerous translations and editions of Verlaine — I don’t have any particular recommendations.
Here are some other links that I think you will find of interest:
Rimbaud and Verlaine in the news:
www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-very-french-fight-over-reuniting-rimbaud-and-verlaine-in-the-pantheon
Another article on the same topic:
www.nytimes.com/2020/11/01/world/europe/rimbaud-verlaine-france-pantheon.html
And here are two brief film portraits of Paris and Parisians by Leonard Pitt:
“Paris My Dream” (7 minutes):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf9fYQgrneU
“Paris My Eye” (26 minutes):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdKbKIchidg&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3YYOOmv63rjFY7cLMBolXKQwF5r6yD_9_qSdfxxwpVtpHk6AUS47orBHw
Leonard Pitt is one of Berkeley’s (and Paris’s) treasures. A noted actor (having among other things studied mime for several years in Paris back in the sixties), he has also authored several Paris-related books, including Walks Through Lost Paris (French edition: Promenades dans le Paris disparu); Paris: A Journey Through Time; and My Brain on Fire: Paris and Other Obsessions. Check out his website for more information on them plus a whole slew of photos, film clips, and other Paris-related material:
www.leonardpitt.com/
[November 11, 2020]
Apollinaire and Cendrars
The next meeting of our French Poets series will be Sunday, November 22. At that meeting we will be examining Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) and Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961). Please read the following:
Apollinaire: “Zone” [Rees 540-551]
Apollinaire: “Le Pont Mirabeau” (”The Mirabeau Bridge”) [Rees 551-553]
Apollinaire: “Visée” (”Aim”) {Rees 566]
Apollinaire: “La jolie rousse” (”The Pretty Redhead”) [Rees 567-569]
Cendrars: “Prose du Transsibérien” (”Prose of the Transsiberian”) [Rees 573-589]
I have found a lot of relevant links, of which I have selected that following that I think will make your reading more fun and rewarding:
Apollinaire:
“The Poet Who Painted with His Words”:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ0x1YOuMwQ (This is a short and somewhat simplistic video, but perhaps a helpful intro to Apollinaire’s era and his picture-poem
“calligrammes” [of which “Visée”/“Aim” is an example].)
“Apollinaire” (a very early 3-minute documentary in French):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOrMYKpA2AM
“Zone” (dramatic video reading in English):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lds0SM0iZZo
“Le Point Mirabeau” read by Apollinaire himself:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UGA_T4G3Ns
“Le Pont Mirabeau” (slowly read with subtitles as a sort of lesson in French pronunciation):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEA6cby_0dE
“Le Pont Mirabeau” (sung by Léo Ferré):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILLOj0oMx3k
Analysis of “Le Pont Mirabeau”:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTL89MnLKzc (It’s in French, but sufficiently illustrated visually that it’s not too hard to follow.)
“Les Mamelles de Tiresias”:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0MV4NCTh18 (excerpts from a modern production of Apollinaire’s 1917 play, which Apollinaire described by coining the word
“surrealist”)
Cendrars:
“Transsiberian” (French with English subtitles):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcPkcUtrr1Q
(NOTE: This 23-minute reading is the complete poem. The excerpts in the Rees
anthology comprise about half of the poem.)
“Blaise Cendrars tells his story” (3-minute illustrated recording with English subtitles):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olw—3ow1z4
“Blaise Cendrars — rare footage” (a wonderful little 3-minute scene in a Paris bar):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGiYeA-uwy4
“Blaise Cendrars/Sonia Delaunay/La Prose du Transsibérien”:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czss_QaDSVo (This is a 35-minute talk about the marvelous illustrated 7-foot foldout booklet that painter Sonia Delaunay created with Cendrars’s poem, of which a copy can be seen at the Legion of Honor museum in SF. The first 20 minutes are the most interesting; the remainder is Q&A.)
[November 23, 2020]
Book group with special guest
The next meeting of our French Poets series will be Sunday, December 6. At that meeting we will be examining four surrealist or semi-surrealist poets: Pierre Reverdy (1889-1960), André Breton (1896-1966), Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), and Henri Michaux (1899-1984). Please read the following:
Reverdy: “Secret,” “Miracle,” “The Same Number,” “Late at Night,” and “A Ringing Bell” (five short poems translated by Kenneth Rexroth): www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/translations/french.htm
Breton: “Union libre” (“Free Union”) [Rees 682-685]
Artaud: “Do Evil” (seven poem fragments translated by Rexroth): www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/translations/french.htm
Michaux: “Mes occupations” (“My Avocations”) [Rees 776-777]
Michaux: “Le grand violon” (“The Tall Violin”) [Rees 780-781]
In addition, please read Rexroth’s essay “The Cubist Poetry of Pierre Reverdy”: www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/reverdy.htm. This essay may be a bit difficult in some places, but if you read it carefully I think you will get a better idea of what is going on in Reverdy’s poems, and what similar or different types of things are going on in the poems of Apollinaire, Cendrars, Breton, etc.
As an added treat, my friend Penelope Rosemont, one of the founders of the American surrealist movement back in the 1960s, will be joining us from Chicago — so we should have some lively Q&A with her!
[December 7, 2020]
More French Poetry references
Thanks to everyone who attended our very lively meeting yesterday, and in particular to our special guest Penelope Rosemont, who described some of her experiences in the international surrealist scene and answered a lot of questions, and to Eric Larsen for his fine presentation of Michaux’s paintings and their connection with Eric’s butoh dance performances.
Before and after each meeting I’ve been sending you assorted links and book info re the authors we’re exploring, but at this point I’m going to list some books that are pertinent to all of the upcoming meetings, in case you would like to order copies in advance. None of these books are required (our readings will continue to be freely accessible either in the Rees anthology or online), but all of them are recommended if you are inspired to pursue any particular author or theme.
General collections and studies:
William Rees (ed.), The Penguin Book of French Poetry 1820-1950. This large anthology is the one we are using, but the following three are more extensive for particular periods.
Angel Flores (ed.), An Anthology of French Poetry from Nerval to Valéry [ca. 1850-1920]
Wallace Fowlie (ed.), Mid-Century French Poets [ca. 1900-1950]
Paul Auster (ed.), The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry [ca. 1900-1980]
Kenneth Rexroth, One Hundred Poems from the French (a small collection of his translations, mostly early 20th century)
Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France 1885 to World War I (a fascinating exploration of la Belle Époque, focusing on four key figures: Alfred Jarry, Henri Rousseau, Erik Satie, and Guillaume Apollinaire)
Philippe Soupault, Lost Profiles: Memoirs of Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism (translated by my friend Alan Bernheimer, this little book includes Soupault’s reminiscences of Apollinaire, Proust, Joyce, Reverdy, Cendrars, and others)
Anna Balakian, Surrealism: The Road to the Absolute
Maurice Nadeau, The History of Surrealism
Raoul Vaneigem, A Cavalier History of Surrealism (a more critical take by the well-known situationist)Specific authors:
Pierre Reverdy, Selected Poems (trans. Rexroth)
O. V. de Lubicz-Milosz, Fourteen Poems (trans. Rexroth)
Blaise Cendrars, Selected Writings (ed. Walter Albert)
Guillaume Apollinaire, Selected Writings (ed. Roger Shattuck)
André Breton, What Is Surrealism? and Other Writings (ed. Franklin Rosemont)
André Breton, Manifestos of Surrealism
André Breton, Conversations: The Autobiography of Surrealism
André Breton, Nadja
Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant (the other classic surrealist prose work, along with Nadja)
Antonin Artaud, Artaud Anthology (ed. Jack Hirschman)
Henri Michaux, Selected Writings: The Space Within (ed. Richard Ellmann)
Jules Supervielle, Selected Writings (ed. Enid McLeod)
Penelope Rosemont, Dreams and Everyday Life: A 1960s Notebook
Penelope Rosemont, Surrealism: Inside the Magnetic Fields (essays)
And here are some miscellaneous links you might like to check out:
Reverdy wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Reverdy
Rexroth, “The Cubist Poetry of Pierre Reverdy”: www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/reverdy.htm (introduction to his book of Reverdy translations)
Rexroth, “cubist” poems: www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/poems/1920s.htm (Rexroth’s own early ventures in that style)
Rexroth, “Blaise Cendrars”: www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/cendrars.htm (review of Cendrars’s Selected Writings)
Rexroth, “Surrealist Poetry”: www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/surrealism.htm (review of the Balakian book)
Rexroth, “The Influence of French Poetry on American”: www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/frenchpoetry.htm (a lengthy but very interesting essay, going into detail about the similarities and differences among dozens of French and American poets in their diverse cultural contexts during the period we’ve been looking at)
Artaud wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonin_Artaud
Artaud as the sympathetic monk in Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD6Eex8dQ2I (incidentally, this is one of the greatest films ever made)
A brief later video of Artaud: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMTKCES1vPk
Michaux wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Michaux
Michaux art works: www.artnet.com/artists/henri-michaux/
Philip Lamantia surrealist poems with music: https://edgetonerecords.bandcamp.com/album/blood-of-the-air (recommended by Kersti)
[December 21, 2020]
Following up our meeting yesterday, here are some recommended links:
Charles Cros
Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Cros
”The Smoked Herring” read in French:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS9V2Hk_YAs
The same poem animated:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q_0tqovYOk
A different animation narrated by a child:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH_L1KIdcMY
(All three versions are a lot of fun.)
Oscar de Lubicz-Milosz
Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Milosz
”November Symphony” read in French:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy5i1lOi0aA
Fourteen Poems by O. de Lubicz-Milosz, translated by Kenneth Rexroth
The Noble Traveller: The Life and Writings of Oskar Milosz, ed. Christopher Bamford (a much larger anthology of translations)
Francis Carco
Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Carco
The Rexroth jazz-poetry recording of “The Shadow” that I played for you is unfortunately not online, but here are four other Rexroth readings with jazz: http://jacketmagazine.com/23/rex-audio.html
And here are four Rexroth articles about jazz-poetry:
www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/jazz-poetry.htm
Léon-Paul Fargue
Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on-Paul_Fargue
Several of Fargue’s prose poems are included in Mid-Century French Poets, ed. Wallace Fowlie (which also includes poems by Desnos, Supervielle, Breton, Michaux, etc.)
Robert Desnos
Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Desnos
Here you can see lots of photos of Desnos and his wife Youki, including one of Desnos in the
Nazi concentration camp where he died:
www.google.com/search?q=robert+desnos+photos&client=firefox-b-1-d&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=QA2GCKfKKPJIPM%252CGqHs-pGhBFVirM%252C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kTi_hjggN5klSymoQSM34h4uTduAA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjqze2c3N_tAhWcFTQIHfr1BpcQ9QF6BAgOEAE&biw=1920&bih=938#imgrc=QA2GCKfKKPJIPM
Jacques Prévert
Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Pr%C3%A9vert
Paroles, translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (a gem, one of the original City Lights
“Pocket Poets” series, recently reissued with a new introduction by Ferlinghetti)
We will be hearing song versions of several of Prévert’s poems in our upcoming French Songs series.
Prévert is also noted for his scenarios for several French films, including one of the greatest films of all time, Children of Paradise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Paradise
Raymond Queneau
Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Queneau
Exercises in Style (a fascinating composition: 100 versions of the same brief anecdote, each in a different literary style): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercises_in_Style
Zazie in the Metro (a popular novel, made into a film by Louis Malle): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zazie_in_the_Metro
Jules Supervielle
Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Supervielle
“Homage to Life” read in French:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5hkjlAym0I
Selected Writings of Jules Supervielle, trans. by Rexroth, Denise Levertov, et al.
The Secret World of French Songs
Dear Friends,
As many of you know, during the last five years I’ve been leading a literary discussion group. Until early this year it met in a bookstore in Berkeley, but since the pandemic we’ve shifted to meeting online via Zoom. The group meets every other Sunday, 4:30-7:00 p.m. Pacific Time, and participation is free. (I’m doing this just for fun.)
Up till now we’ve mostly been reading classic European fiction and poetry. Coming up, however, we’re going to have a three-month musical interlude: From January to March 2021 we’re going to explore the secret world of French songs — from nineteenth-century cabaret songs, through the noirish chansons réalistes of the 1930s and the delightfully zany Charles Trenet, to great post-World War II singer-songwriters such as Léo Ferré, Jacques Brel, Anne Sylvestre, and above all Georges Brassens.
While our book group typically involves a fair amount of reading and lots of discussion, this song series will be more in the nature of a presentation. There will still be some discussion, but most of our time will be spent simply listening to great performances of some great songs, with me as the deejay.
We are also going to record the meetings. I have resisted doing this before, feeling that it might inhibit discussion. But in this case I don’t think that will be much of an issue, since the main portion of the meetings will be me introducing, playing, and commenting the songs. (The discussions that follow my presentations will not be recorded.) Also, several people in France and elsewhere in Europe have asked that the meetings be recorded, since the time difference makes it difficult for them to take part in real time.
No knowledge of French is necessary. I and some French friends will be on hand to translate the lyrics, explain the allusions and slang terms, and put the songs in the context of French culture and history.
The tentative schedule is as follows:
1. January 3: Nineteenth century (Pierre-Jean Béranger, Paris Commune, Aristide Bruant, Yvette Guilbert)
2. January 17: Chansons réalistes (Fréhel, Damia, Edith Piaf)
3. January 31: Charles Trenet and other Music Hall stars
4. February 14: Georges Brassens (1)
5. February 28: Georges Brassens (2)
6. March 14: Pierre Mac Orlan, Jacques Prévert, Léo Ferré, Jean-Marc Caussimon
7. March 28: Jacques Brel, Félix Leclerc, Guy Béart, Anne Sylvestre
The reason I refer to these songs as a “secret world” is not because they are particularly mysterious. It’s because they have unfortunately remained almost totally unknown to English-speaking people. Here’s your chance to find out what you’ve been missing!
Ken
NOTE:
I won’t reproduce the emails for the French Songs sessions here because I’ve already posted a complete email chronicle of
them here, including links to video recordings of all
the sessions. Note, however, that my original plan for a seven-session series was expanded
to ten sessions as I realized how many great modern performers
and songs there were, so the series actually extended into early May 2021.
The final augmented list of sessions and performers was as follows:
THE SECRET WORLD OF FRENCH SONGS
Session 1 (January 3): Nineteenth and early
twentieth century: Pierre-Jean de Béranger, Paris Commune, Aristide Bruant,
Yvette Guilbert
Session 2 (January 17): Chansons réalistes:
Fréhel, Damia, Edith Piaf, Jean Gabin
Session 3 (January 31): Charles Trenet + a sampling of other music-hall stars
(Mistinguett, Tino Rossi, Rina Ketty, Josephine Baker, Fernandel, Mireille,
Maurice Chevalier)
Session 4 (February 14): Georges Brassens (1)
Session 5 (February 28): Georges Brassens (2)
Session 6 (March 14): Boris Vian, Jacques Prévert,
Serge Gainsbourg, Léo Ferré, Jean-Roger Caussimon, Guy Béart
Session 7 (March 28): Anne Sylvestre, Barbara, Françoise Hardy,
Eva, Anne Vanderlove, Dalida, Hélène Martin, Monique Morelli, Pia Colombo
Session 8 (April 11): Jacques Brel, Charles Aznavour,
Georges Moustaki, Serge Reggiani, Gilbert Bécaud, Claude Nougaro, Jean Ferrat, Christine Sèvres
Session 9 (April 25): Pierre Mac Orlan, Germaine
Montero, La Bolduc, Félix Leclerc, Gilles Vigneault, Robert Charlebois,
Monique Leyrac
Session 10 (May 9): Les Compagnons de la Chanson, Jacques Douai, Yves Montand,
Mouloudji, Michel Legrand, Jeanne Moreau, Hugues Aufray,
Maxime Le Forestier, Gérard Manset, Mireille Mathieu, Raoul Vaneigem, Alain Souchon, François
Béranger, Adrienne Pauly, Boby
Lapointe, Bourvil
2021
Parade’s End
Dear Friends,
Starting on May 23 our Zoom group will resume our exploration of literary classics, beginning with two great twentieth-century English novels, Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End and Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook.
This will be quite a change of pace for those of us who have been immersed in a variety of French songs during the last few months. In contrast to this musical interlude, which due to the nature of the material and the size of the group has mostly consisted of presentations by me to audiences of 50-60 people, the book group is likely to have far fewer people and the focus will get back to discussion, with everyone encouraged to take part and me simply acting as a facilitator.
Many of you have probably never even heard of Parade’s End. I had vaguely heard of it back in the 1960s, but I doubt if I would have ever read it if Kenneth Rexroth had not recommended it so highly. I therefore did read it and I agreed with him that it is one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Years later I reread it with even greater pleasure and admiration, appreciating many things I hadn’t noticed during my first reading, and I’m looking forward to a third reading with our group.
Here are a few excerpts from Rexroth’s Classics Revisited essay on Ford’s book:
The great bulk of the world’s prose fiction, contemporary and past, does not wear well. Almost all of it is soon forgotten and of those books which survive the wear of time, only a few withstand the effects of time on the reader himself. Out of all the novels ever written there is only about a ten-foot shelf of books which can be read again and again in later life with thorough approval and with that necessary identification that Coleridge long ago called suspension of disbelief. It is not ideas or ideologies or dogmas that become unacceptable. Any cultivated person should be able to accept temporarily the cosmology and religion of Dante or Homer. The emotional attitudes and the responses to people and to the crises of life in most fiction come to seem childish as we ourselves experience the real thing. Books written far away and long ago in quite different cultures with different goods and goals in life, about people utterly unlike ourselves, may yet remain utterly convincing — The Tale of Genji, The Satyricon, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Njal’s Saga, remain true to our understanding of the ways of man to man the more experienced we grow. Of only a few novels in the twentieth century is this true. Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End is one of those books. . . .
Graham Greene once said of Parade’s End that it was the only adult novel dealing with the sexual life that has been written in English. This is a startling superlative, but it may well be true. Certainly the book has a scope and depth, a power and complexity quite unlike anything in modern fiction, and still more unusual, it is about mature people in grown-up situations, written by a thoroughly adult man. . . .
Ford liked to point out that Dostoievsky was guilty of the worst possible taste in making his characters discuss the profundity of the very novel in which they were taking part. Ford’s Ivan Karamazov and Alyosha would have talked only about the quality of the cherry jam and thereby have revealed gulfs known only to the discreet. The complex web of shifting time, the multiple aspects of each person, the interweaving and transmutation of motives, all these appear in the novels Ford wrote with Joseph Conrad, but here, where he is on his own, Ford’s talent for once seems to have been fully liberated, to go to its utmost limits. (Classics Revisited: www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/10.htm#Parade%E2%80%99s%20End)
Here is a passage from another essay, where Rexroth is writing about the virtues of the classic Chinese novels:
. . . What are these virtues? First, an absolute mastery of pure narrative. Second, humanity. Third, as the synthesis of virtues one and two, a whole group of qualities that should have some one name — reticence, artistic humility, maturity, objectivity, total sympathy, the ability to reveal the macrocosm in the microcosm, the moral universe in the physical act, the depths of psychological insight in the trivia of happenstance, without ever saying anything about it, or them — the “big” things, that is. This is a quality of style. It is the fundamental quality of the greatest style. It does have a name, although it is not a term we usually think of as part of the jargon of literary criticism. The word is magnanimity.
The antonym, I guess, is self-indulgence. Surely one of the characteristics of our naughty age is the self-indulgence of our artists, and none more so than our novelists. “Modern classic” or vulgar trash, my usual reaction to a novel full of cocktail party psychoanalysis and indigestible recipes from the latest stylistic cookbooks is, “Oh, for God’s sake, come off it. Grown men don’t behave this way.” And who isn’t self-indulgent? Proust? Henry James? The author of Finnegans Wake? Jack Kerouac? To ask the question, as they say in speeches, is to answer it. I know of only one completely adult major novel of my time, Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End. It is significant that it was badly reviewed and then remaindered, partly because the introduction by an American professor and the publicity by the Knopf staff demonstrated a one hundred percent incomprehension of its significance. Nobody realized that it was the most important twentieth-century “war novel” in any language; nobody even knew what it was about: that war is the hypertrophy and social proliferation of tiny, trivial, sordid, personal evil — what grandma used to call sin. Ford didn’t label his thesis; he probably didn’t know he had one in that sense. His characters didn’t philosophize about it. He didn’t snoop around in their minds with a lot of jargon. Nobody’s consciousness streamed. It all just happened, like it does, and you were left with that — the brutal and the silly and the beautiful facts. It is so easy to be artistic. It is so hard to be mature. This is not a digression. This is the very essence of the Chinese novel. Magnanimity. (“The Chinese Classic Novel: The Art of Magnanimity”: www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/chinesenovels.htm)
And here are the first two pages of the book itself:
The two young men — they were of the English public official class — sat in the perfectly appointed railway carriage. The leather straps to the windows were of virgin newness; the mirrors beneath the new luggage racks immaculate as if they had reflected very little; the bulging upholstery in its luxuriant, regulated curves was scarlet and yellow in an intricate, minute dragon pattern, the design of a geometrician in Cologne. The compartment smelt faintly, hygienically of admirable varnish; the train ran as smoothly — Tietjens remembered thinking — as British gilt-edged securities. It travelled fast; yet had it swayed or jolted over the rail joints, except at the curve before Tonbridge or over the points at Ashford where these eccentricities are expected and allowed for, Macmaster, Tietjens felt certain, would have written to the company. Perhaps he would even have written to the Times.
Their class administered the world, not merely the newly-created Imperial Department of Statistics under Sir Reginald Ingleby. If they saw policemen misbehave, railway porters lack civility, an insufficiency of street lamps, defects in public services or in foreign countries, they saw to it, either with nonchalant Balliol voices, or with letters to the Times, asking in regretful indignation: “Has the British This or That come to this!” Or they wrote, in the serious reviews of which so many still survived, articles taking under their care, manners, the Arts, diplomacy, inter-Imperial trade or the personal reputations of deceased statesmen and men of letters.
Macmaster, that is to say, would do all that: of himself Tietjens was not so certain. There sat Macmaster; smallish; Whig; with a trimmed, pointed black beard, such as a smallish man might wear to enhance his already germinated distinction; black hair of a stubborn fibre, drilled down with hard metal brushes; a sharp nose; strong, level teeth; a white, butterfly collar of the smoothness of porcelain; a tie confined by a gold ring, steel-blue speckled with black — to match his eyes, as Tietjens knew.
Tietjens, on the other hand, could not remember what coloured tie he had on. He had taken a cab from the office to their rooms, had got himself into a loose, tailored coat and trousers, and a soft shirt, had packed, quickly, but still methodically, a great number of things in an immense two-handled kit-bag, which you could throw into a guard’s van if need be. He disliked letting that “man” touch his things; he had disliked letting his wife’s maid pack for him. He even disliked letting porters carry his kit-bag. He was a Tory — and as he disliked changing his clothes, there he sat, on the journey, already in large, brown, hugely-welted and nailed golf boots, leaning forward on the edge of the cushion, his legs apart, on each knee an immense white hand — and thinking vaguely.
Macmaster, on the other hand, was leaning back, reading some small, unbound printed sheets, rather stiff, frowning a little. Tietjens knew that this was, for Macmaster, an impressive moment. He was correcting the proofs of his first book.
To this affair, as Tietjens knew, there attached themselves many fine shades. If, for instance, you had asked Macmaster whether he were a writer, he would have replied with the merest suggestion of a deprecatory shrug.
“No, dear lady!” for of course no man would ask the question of anyone so obviously a man of the world. And he would continue with a smile: “Nothing so fine! A mere trifler at odd moments. A critic, perhaps. Yes! A little of a critic.”
Nevertheless Macmaster moved in drawing-rooms that, with long curtains, blue china plates, large-patterned wallpapers and large, quiet mirrors, sheltered the long-haired of the Arts. And, as near as possible to the dear ladies who gave the At Homes, Macmaster could keep up the talk — a little magisterially. He liked to be listened to with respect when he spoke of Botticelli, Rossetti, and those early Italian artists whom he called “The Primitives.” Tietjens had seen him there. And he didn’t disapprove.
For, if they weren’t, these gatherings, Society, they formed a stage on the long and careful road to a career in a first-class Government office. And, utterly careless as Tietjens imagined himself of careers or offices, he was, if sardonically, quite sympathetic towards his friend’s ambitiousnesses. It was an odd friendship, but the oddnesses of friendships are a frequent guarantee of their lasting texture. . . .
I have given you these three extensive quotations without worrying about the fact that public announcements are supposed to be short and catchy. Parade’s End is more than 800 pages long and we’re going to take eight meetings over a period of four months to read it and discuss it and savor it. If you haven’t had the patience and interest to read this far, this book is not for you anyway. But if you are intrigued by Rexroth’s remarks and by the opening paragraphs of the book, I think you will find reading Ford’s masterpiece to be a memorable and perhaps even illuminating experience.
One of my friends once said to me, “You know, I never quite understood what Rexroth meant when he was talking about ‘magnanimity.’ I just read Parade’s End and now I get it.”
Participation in this group is free and all are welcome who do the reading (about 100 pages every two weeks). This is a vast and subtle book, but it does not require any particular literary or historical knowledge. Like Don Quixote and Tom Jones and Madame Bovary and the other classic works we’ve been exploring, it is basically about the life we live and the world we live in, however different some of the details may be.
Our group meets every other Sunday, 4:30-7:00 p.m. Pacific Time. For the time being we will continue to meet via Zoom. If you are interested in taking part, please let me know.
I also suggest that you get the book soon, since ordering a copy may take some time if you can’t find it at a local bookstore. There are many editions, but if possible I recommend that you get the one-volume edition published by Knopf (either paperback or hardback), so that we will all have the same pagination.
Cheers,
Ken
[May 11, 2021]
Dear Friends,
Welcome to our Parade’s End reading group! The group will meet via Zoom every other Sunday, 4:30-7:00 p.m. Pacific Time, beginning on May 23.
For now, just some preliminary orientation:
Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) was a prolific novelist, poet, essayist, memoirist, social historian, critic, editor, and general literary personality. He authored more than seventy books. He grew up among the Pre-Raphaelites (some of whom were his relatives) and was a friend and colleague of Henry James, Stephen Crane, H.G. Wells, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, William Carlos Williams, and countless other writers and artists. He collaborated with Joseph Conrad on three novels during which each writer learned stylistic fine points from the other. He edited two influencial literary journals, in which process he discovered and mentored many younger writers, including D.H. Lawrence. He is most well known for his many volumes of lively literary reminiscences and for his two greatest novels, The Good Soldier (1915) and Parade’s End (1928).
Parade’s End is actually a series of four novels that were originally published separately: Some Do Not (1924), No More Parades (1925), A Man Could Stand Up (1926), and The Last Post (1928). The timespan is roughly a decade (1912-1921). The book deals with the world of that era (including World War I), but it presents that world primarily through a few main characters during just a few particular days of their lives.
For our first meeting (Sunday, May 23) please read Chapters 1-3 of Some Do Not (pp. 1-63 of the Knopf edition).
Looking forward to exploring this wonderful book with you!
[August 30, 2021]
Books by and about Ford Madox Ford
Thanks to those who joined us for our Parade’s End meetings. I hope you’ll also be joining us for our upcoming exploration of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook.
Meanwhile, in case you are interested, here are some Ford follow-ups.
Ford wrote more than 70 books, but here are a few I recommend:
Novels and Poems:
The Fifth Queen (a trilogy re Katherine Howard, one of Henry VIII’s wives)
The Good Soldier (Ford’s other novelistic masterpiece)
Selected Poems
Buckshee (his last and most wonderful poems, addressed to Janice Biala)
Memoirs and Literary Criticism:
Henry James: A Critical Study
Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance
Portraits from Life (re D.H. Lawrence, H.G. Wells, Stephen Crane, Turgeniev, James, Conrad, etc.)
The March of Literature (800-page survey of world literature “From Confucius’ Day to Our Own”)
Return to Yesterday (reminiscences up to 1914)
It Was the Nightingale (reminiscences 1918-1933)
Your Mirror to My Times (a good selection from his memoirs, arranged to form a sort of autobiography)
Sondra Stang (ed.), The Ford Madox Ford Reader (a large selection of his many other books)
Brita Lindberg (ed.), Pound/Ford: The Story of a Literary Friendship (letters, etc.)
About Ford:
Alan Judd, Ford Madox Ford (an excellent shorter bio)
Max Saunders, Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life (the huge definitive bio
in two large volumes; Volume 2 includes an excellent 90-page analysis of Parade’s End)
Rexroth’s Classics Revisited essay on Parade’s End —
www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/10.htm#Parade%E2%80%99s%20End
Rexroth’s Introduction to Ford’s “Buckshee” poems —
www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/ford-madox-ford.htm
Films:
The Good Soldier. Complete film freely accessible here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA0PjehNE9Q
Parade’s End (BBC 5-hour TV film). DVD set available at libraries or for purchase; clips can be viewed here:
www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Ford+Parade%27s+End
Julian Barnes, “A Tribute to Parade’s End” (review of the above film):
www.theguardian.com/books/2012/aug/24/julian-barnes-parades-end-ford-madox-ford
Enjoy!
Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook
Dear Friends,
On September 12 our book discussion group will begin exploring Doris Lessing’s novel The Golden Notebook.
The 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature for Lessing referred to her as “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny.” She was a prolific author, but The Golden Notebook is widely considered her greatest work. It has definitely been her most influential one, impacting many people’s lives and continuing to provoke extreme reactions more than fifty years after its original publication in 1962.
The novel consists of an ongoing narrative entitled (with some irony) “Free Women,” interspersed with extensive passages from the private notebooks of the main character, Anna Wulf. In an effort to sort out the conflicting facets of her life, Anna uses a black notebook to recount her earlier days in southern Africa, a red one to examine her experiences in and out of the British Communist Party (during the post-Stalin crises of the 1950s), a yellow one to draft a partially autobiographical novel, and a blue one for a personal diary. As the interplay of these notebooks and her life develops, Anna finally brings the different strands together in a golden notebook.
The Golden Notebook is a one of the few modern novels that I think has real substance and originality. Reading it can be an emotionally exhausting experience, but I think it’s worth it. Not only are many nuances of interpersonal and intersexual relations gone into in a detail found in few, if any, previous fictional works, they are also interwoven with significant psychological and political issues. Even if you question some of Lessing’s takes on those issues, I think you’ll find that you have been confronted with some new perspectives on life.
[October 25, 2021]
Following up our reading of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, here are a few links you might find of interest:
Wikipedia article — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Lessing
47-minute interview in 2008 (just after she received the Nobel Prize) — www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs_hZm6LD44
Obit + 5-minute interview with Bill Moyers — www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcctSKWjXKY
2-hour audio dramatization of The Golden Notebook:
Part 1 — www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRKSrWOA15U
Part 2 — www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMWntzr6jSI
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Dear Friends,
After six years of exploring European classics from the Renaissance to the twentieth century (including a musical interlude of French songs), we are about to embark on a three-year journey through a wide range of earlier classics from all over the world. 2022 will consist entirely of Asian works. 2023 will feature ancient Mediterranean works (mostly Greek). 2024 will feature of a variety of more or less “folkloristic” works, culminating in another lengthy musical interlude.
As a prelude to our Year of Asian Classics, our next reading (November 21 and December 5) is the oldest substantial literary work in the world: The Epic of Gilgamesh. The earliest Sumerian versions of Gilgamesh date from more than 4000 years ago, and even the much later “Standard Version” in Akadian is more than 3000 years old.
“The solemn style of The Epic of Gilgamesh, like the words of some great ritual, is the direct embodiment of a vision and judgment of the human condition that is permanent and universal. The absurdity of life and death, heroic wistfulness, nostalgia for lost possibilities, melancholy of missed perfection were as meaningful five thousand years ago to the Sumerians as they are to us. . . . From the first narrative in the world’s literature Gilgamesh emerges as the first conscious self. In the course of four thousand years of fiction, self-consciousness will be achieved in many different and more elaborate ways, but it will in fact and essence vary not at all.” (Rexroth)
Here’s our schedule for the rest of the year:
Sunday, November 21, 4:30-7:00 p.m. The Epic of Gilgamesh (Nancy Sandars’s prose translation)
Sunday, December 5, 4:30-7:00 p.m. The Epic of Gilgamesh (selections from Andrew George’s more literal scholarly translation)
Sunday, December 12, 1:00-5:00 p.m. Book group party at my place (details will be announced later)
Then we’ll have a holiday break, resuming on January 9.
Both Gilgamesh translations can be freely viewed or downloaded online:
The Nancy Sandars translation (Penguin, 1972) is here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=Y2xldmVsYW5kY291bnR5c2Nob29scy5vcmd8am5zdG9uZXxneDoyZjIyYjM0ODVkMzFiNWMw
The Andrew George translation (Penguin, 1999) is here: https://archive.org/details/12CPReadingTheEpicOfGilgamesh/
[December 6, 2021]
Following our Gilgamesh readings, here are some related books:
Benjamin Foster (ed. and trans.), The Epic of Gilgamesh: A Norton Critical Edition (Norton, 2001). A scholarly translation similar to Andrew George’s, along with several articles about the text.
John Gardner & John Maier (ed. and trans.), Gilgamesh (Vintage, 1984). A somewhat earlier scholarly-poetic translation of the Standard Version.
Michael Schmidt, Gilgamesh: The Life of a Poem (Princeton/Oxford, 2019). An interesting modern examination of the work from all sorts of different perspectives. (Just what sort of genre is this work? What kinds of impacts has it had, historically and recently?)
David Damrosch, The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh (Holt, 2006). An interesting account of the rediscovery and decipherment of the work (and of Sumerian language and culture in general) beginning around 1850.
Benjamin Foster (ed. and trans.), From Distant Days: Myths, Tales, and Poetry of Ancient Mesopotamia (CDL Press, 1995). An anthology of other works from this same period. (This is the book that Sabrina recommended at our meeting yesterday.)
Andrew George lecture on Gilgamesh — www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd7MrGy_tEg. Andrew George gives a one-hour lecture at the University of Chicago, followed by shorter talks by several other scholars.
Performances of Gilgamesh:
The opening lines of the poem — www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUcTsFe1PVs
Gilgamesh’s Lament for Enkidu — www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd7qeP3R5vw
A complete concert version in Arabic — www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ARRP5i2nw8
Gilgamesh on Star Trek — www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoM_kPGfkw0
You might also like to check out this exhibit of ancient Mesopotamian arts and artefacts —
https://mesopotamia.getty.edu/
A Year of Asian Classics
Dear Friends,
After six years of exploring European classics from the Renaissance to the twentieth century (including a musical interlude of French songs), we are about to embark on a three-year journey through a wide range of earlier classics from all over the world. 2022 will consist entirely of Asian works. 2023 will feature ancient Mediterranean works (mostly Greek). 2024 will feature of a variety of more or less “folkloristic” works, culminating in another lengthy musical interlude.
Our group meets via Zoom every other Sunday, 4:30-7:00 p.m. Pacific Time. Participation is free and all are welcome. Let me know if you would like to join us.
The schedule for the next few months is:
January 9: Bhagavad Gita
January 23: Bhagavad Gita
February 6: Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught
February 20: Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught
March 6: Tao Te Ching
March 20: Tao Te Ching
April 3: Chuang Tzu
April 17: Chuang Tzu
May 1: 101 Zen Stories
May 15: 101 Zen Stories
May 29: Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
June 12: Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
In January we will be reading The Song of God: Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood with an Introduction by Aldous Huxley. I recommend that you get this version so we will all be on the same page, but you are welcome and in fact encouraged to get one or more other versions for comparison. Rexroth particularly praised the verse translation by Ann Stanford, and he also recommended the scholarly editions by Franklin Edgerton and S. Radhakrishnan. Here are some excerpts from Rexroth’s Classics Revisited essay on the Gita:
Sometime around the third century before the Christian era an unknown author inserted into the epic story of The Mahabharata a comparatively short religious document, not only small in comparison to the immense size of the epic itself — which was already becoming the gather-all for Hinduism — but shorter by far than any of the scriptures of the other world religions. This is The Bhagavad-Gita, ‘The Lord’s Song,’ one of the three or four most influential writings in the history of man. It is not only influential, it is more profound and more systematic than most religious texts. . . . The poem starts out simply enough and scarcely seems to violate the context of the epic; in fact the first two chapters may largely be part of the original tale. At the major crisis of The Mahabharata the warring clans, and their allies numbering uncountable thousands, are marshaled for the crucial battle that will exterminate almost all of them. The Prince Arjuna is sickened by the vision of the coming slaughter and is about to turn away in disgust and give up the battle. His charioteer, Krishna, advises him to fight. He tells him that no one really dies, that the myriad dead of the day on the morrow will move on in the wheel of life, and that anyway, killer and killed are illusory, and that the warrior’s duty is to fight without questioning, but with indifference to gain or glory, dedicating his military virtues to God as a work of prayer. This advice horrifies modern commentators with their sophisticated ethical sensibility, although it is certainly common enough advice of army chaplains. We forget that The Bhagavad-Gita begins in the epic context, as though the Sermon on the Mount were to appear in The Iliad evolving out of the last fatal conversation between Hector and Andromache. . . . Krishna describes briefly the roads to salvation — work, ritual, learning, or rather, wisdom by learning, contemplation, and devotion. He then describes the metaphysical structure of being which culminates in what nowadays we would call the inscrutable ground of being, Brahman, the source of the creative principle of reality. . . . In answer to Arjuna’s plea, Krishna reveals himself as the incarnation of the universal form, the embodiment of all the creative activity of all the universes. That itself is only a kind of mask, an incarnation, for he, Krishna, is the actual, direct embodiment of Ishvara, the Person who transcends the unknowable and who can be approached directly by the person Arjuna, as friend to Friend. The central meaning of ‘The Lord’s Song’ is that being is a conversation of lovers. (Rexroth)
2022
[January 10, 2022]
The Bhagavad Gita
At our first Bhagavad Gita meeting yesterday there was a large contingent of local Bay Area people plus others from Los Angeles, Alabama, Maine, Indonesia, Spain, UK, and Germany (those in the latter three countries staying up in the middle of the night their time to take part). Afterwards, one of the participants wrote: “I LOVED IT!!!!” Of course, that’s just her opinion. . . .
Our next meeting will be Sunday, January 23. For that meeting, please finish reading the Prabhavanda-Isherwood translation of the Gita, including all the introductory material and appendixes.
Meanwhile, in case you’d like to do some further exploration:
Two good abridged editions of The Mahabharata (the huge epic into which the Bhagavad-Gita was inserted) are translated by William Buck (Mentor) and by C.V. Narasimhan (Columbia).
Here are Rexroth’s Classics Revisited essays on The Mahabharata and the Gita — www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/2.htm
Here is Christopher Isherwood reading a two-minute portion of his and Prabhavananda’s Gita translation (with photos of the two) — www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqAmoz225po
Aldous Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy goes into much more detail about the generally similar mystical experiences that are found in all the major religions.
What the Buddha Taught
Our next meeting will be Sunday, February 20. For that meeting, please read the remainder of What the Buddha Taught.
If you would like to explore the Four Noble Truths and other basic Buddhist teachings in more detail, here are some of the related books I mentioned at yesterday’s meeting:
Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings
Ajahn Sucitto, Turning the Wheel of Truth: Commentary on the Buddha’s First Teaching
Lucian Stryk (ed.), World of the Buddha (an anthology of texts)
Actually, any of Thich Nhat Hanh’s books are well worth reading. Among many others, I recommend The Miracle of Mindfulness and The Sun My Heart.
At the same time, I have some criticisms of Nhat Hanh and “socially engaged Buddhism,” which I have expressed in these two texts:
“Strong Lessons for Engaged Buddhists” — www.bopsecrets.org/PS/buddhists.htm
“Evading the Transformation of Reality: Engaged Buddhism at an Impasse” — www.bopsecrets.org/recent/buddhists.htm
Taoism and Zen
During the next few months of our “Year of Asian Classics” series, our book group will be reading some key Taoist and Zen texts:
March 6: Tao Te Ching
March 20: Tao Te Ching
April 3: Chuang Tzu
April 17: Chuang Tzu
May 1: 101 Zen Stories
May 15: 101 Zen Stories
May 29: Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
June 12: Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
Here are some of Rexroth’s remarks on the Tao Te Ching:
“The Tao Te Ching is one of the more mysterious documents in the history of religion. . . . The best way to understand the book is as a collection of subjects for meditation, catalysts for contemplation. . . . Whoever wrote the little psalms of the Tao Te Ching believed that the long calm regard of moving water was one of the highest forms of prayer. . . . Others have called it a restatement of the philosophy of the Upanishads in Chinese terms. Zen Buddhists have understood the book as a pure statement of Zen doctrine. Contemporary Chinese, not all of them Marxists, have interpreted it as an attack on private property and feudal oppression, and as propaganda for communist anarchism. Others have interpreted it as a cryptic work of erotic mysticism and yoga exercises. It is all of these things and more — like the Tao itself. . . . At the core of life is a tiny, steady flame of contemplation. If this goes out the person perishes, although the body and its brain may stumble on, and civilization goes rapidly to ruin. . . . The lesson is simple, and once learned, easy to paraphrase. The Tao is like water. Striving is like smoke. There are two ways of knowing: under standing and over bearing. The first is called wisdom. The second is called winning arguments. . . . The enduring and effective power of the individual, whether hermit or king or householder, comes from the still void at the heart of the contemplative. The wise statesman conquers by the quiet use of his opponents’ violence, like the judo and jujitsu experts. . . . The Tao Te Ching is a most remarkable document, but the most remarkable thing about it is that it has not long since converted everyone to its self-evident philosophy. It was called mysterious at the beginning of this essay. It is really simple and obvious; what is mysterious is the complex ignorance and complicated morality of mankind that reject its wisdom.” www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/3.htm
[February 14, 2022]
The Tao Te Ching
Our first Taoism meeting will be Sunday, March 6. For that and the following meeting we will be discussing two Tao Te Ching translations:
The translation by Ursula K. Le Guin (Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way)
The translation by Sam Hamill (Tao Te Ching: A New Translation)
We will also be consulting some of the material in Jonathan Star (ed.), Tao Te Ching: The Definitive Edition (which contains detailed analyses and alternative translations of each line). For the latter book, make sure you get the complete edition that includes all the commentary (2003; 368 pp.), NOT the much shorter mass-market edition.
At the first meeting we will discuss Part 1 of the book (= chapters 1-37), with particular focus on the particularly pithy Chapter 1. If you want to see just how pithy it is, I invite you to peruse the following webpage, which presents 175+ different translations/interpretations of that chapter — www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/tao-te-ching.htm. Some of the versions provide helpful alternative perspectives on the text. Others largely say the same things — some clearly, some not so clearly. A few go off on strange tangents. . . . All of them put together exemplify how this text has driven people to obsession.
So it’s complicated. But as Rexroth noted, it’s also very simple. Please join us as we look into this intriguing little work.
Our next meeting will be Sunday, April 3. For that meeting, please read the first ten chapters (= pp. 1-57) of The Essential Chuang Tzu (translated by Sam Hamill and J.P. Seaton).
Following up yesterday’s discussion, Lisa called my attention to this article on Ursula Le Guin and her translation of the Tao Te Ching: www.themarginalian.org/2016/10/21/lao-tzu-tao-te-ching-ursula-k-le-guin/. The article includes links to several other articles by or about Le Guin, notably including her interesting essay “on being a man” — www.themarginalian.org/2014/10/17/ursula-k-le-guin-gender/
In case you wish to explore further, here are some other books I mentioned or read from:
Kenneth Rexroth, Classics Revisited [essential reading for everyone]
Kenneth Rexroth, More Classics Revisited [ditto]
Raymond Smullyan, The Tao Is Silent [fun]
Arthur Waley, Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China [includes Waley’s translations of and comments on Chuang Tzu]
Zen Stories and Talks
Dear Friends,
During the next four meetings of our “Year of Asian Classics” series, our book group will be exploring two wonderful little Zen classics:
Paul Reps & Nyogen Senzaki, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (May 1 & May 15)
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (May 29 & June 12)
Here is the first story in the Reps-Senzaki book:
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”
“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “You are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
And this is from the first talk in the Suzuki book:
The goal of our practice is always to keep our beginner’s mind. . . . This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few. . . . The beginner’s mind is the mind of compassion. When our mind is compassionate, it is boundless. Self-centered thoughts limit our vast mind. When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners. Then we can really learn something.
Our group meets via Zoom every other Sunday, 4:30-7:00 p.m. Pacific Time. Participation is free and all are welcome. Please let me know if you are interested in taking part in these readings and discussions.
[May 2, 2022]
Here are two of the books that I mentioned at our discussion yesterday:
Susan Moon & Florence Caplow (ed.), The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women. One of the most significant and welcome results of Buddhism’s spread to the West has been the breakdown of traditional Asiatic barriers to the participation of women. Over the last several decades a steadily increasing number of strong women teachers have emerged, and there is also increasing awareness of earlier women teachers who had previously been neglected in the standard histories. This collection presents 100 brief stories and reflections by 100 of these teachers, mostly in the Zen tradition but also including a few others (Tibetan, Vipassana, etc.).
Brian Victoria, Zen at War. A salutary cautionary note for those who may be inclined to idealize Zen and other Far Eastern religions, this book documents the Japanese Zen establishment’s accommodation to Japanese militarist policies before and during World War II (with rare exceptions such as Uchiyama Gudô, an antiwar socialist Soto Zen monk who was executed in 1911).
Following up our discussion of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind yesterday, here are some relevant books and links:
Shunryu Suzuki, Not Always So [another collection of his talks]
Shunryu Suzuki, Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness [talks on the Sandokai]
David Chadwick, Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki [an excellent biography]Berkeley Zen Center — https://berkeleyzencenter.org/ [where I’ve been practicing for many years]
San Francisco Zen Center — www.sfzc.org/ [the center founded by Suzuki; includes Green Gulch Farm in Marin County and the Tassajara Zen Monastery in Big Sur]
Cuke.com — www.cuke.com [David Chadwick’s huge archive of material by and about Shunryu Suzuki]
Film of Shunryu Suzuki giving a talk at Tassajara — www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7umcFZEb7c [the film we watched part of yesterday]
“Zen Practice” — www.bopsecrets.org/PS/autobio3.htm#Zen [chapter from my autobiography]
Chinese and Japanese Poetry
Following our brief explorations of Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, and Zen texts, we’re going to spend the rest of the year sampling some of the great poets of China and Japan plus an abridged version of China’s greatest novel.
Here’s the schedule:
June 26. Shih Ching (The Book of Songs)
July 10. Tu Fu
July 24. Li Po, Wang Wei, Po Chu-i
August 7. Han Shan, Su Tung P’o, etc.
August 21. Classic Japanese poetry
Sept. 4. Basho, Selected Haikus
Sept. 18. Basho, Narrow Road to the Interior
Oct. 2. Basho, Narrow Road to the Interior
Oct. 16. Women poets of Japan
Oct. 30. Women poets of China
Nov. 13. Tsao Hsueh-chin, The Dream of the Red Chamber (abridged)
Nov. 27. Tsao Hsueh-chin, The Dream of the Red Chamber
Dec. 11. Tsao Hsueh-chin, The Dream of the Red Chamber
The books you need to get are in boldface. I’ve also indicated some optional additional recommendations if you wish to explore further.
Eliot Weinberger (ed.), The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry
Kenneth Rexroth, One Hundred Poems from the Chinese
Kenneth Rexroth, Love and the Turning Year: One Hundred More Poems from the Chinese
Robert Payne (ed.), The White Pony: An Anthology of Chinese Poetry
Also recommended:
Arthur Waley, The Book of Songs
David Hawkes, A Little Primer of Tu Fu
Weinberger & Paz (ed.), Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei
Burton Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry
Francois Cheng, Chinese Poetic Writing, with an Anthology of T’ang Poetry
Arthur Waley, Translations from the Chinese
C.H. Kwock & Vincent McHugh, Old Friend from Far Away: 150 Poems from the Great Dynasties
Kenneth Rexroth, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese
Basho, Narrow Road to the Interior & Other Writings (trans. Sam Hamill)
Robert Aitken, A Zen Wave: Basho’s Haiku and Zen
Also recommended:
R.H. Blyth, Haiku (4 volumes)
R.H. Blyth, Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics
Robert Hass, The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa
Kenneth
Rexroth, One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese
Donald Keene, An Anthology of Japanese Literature
Hiroaki Sato, Basho’s Narrow Road
Kenneth Rexroth & Ikuko Atsumi, Women Poets of Japan (a.k.a. The Burning Heart)
Kenneth
Rexroth & Ling Chung, Women Poets of China (a.k.a. The Orchid Boat)
Also recommended:
Li Ch’ing-chao, Complete Poems (trans. Rexroth & Ling Chung)
Tsao Hsueh-chin, The Dream of the Red Chamber (trans. and abridged by Chi-chen Wang)
Also recommended:
Cao Xueqin, The Story of the Stone [complete 5-volume version of the above, trans. by David Hawkes & John Minford)
C.T. Hsia, The Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction
NOTE:
Some miscellaneous links mentioned or discussed during the four Chinese Poetry
meetings:
Tu Fu, “Thoughts While Traveling at Night” (37 different translations): www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/tu-fu.htm
Rexroth’s Classics Revisited essay on Tu Fu: www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/4.htm
Cold Mountain (a short video [28 min.] about the poet Han-shan and the region of Cold Mountain itself [from which he took his name], featuring four poets who have translated him: Gary Snyder, Red Pine, Burton Watson, and Jim Lenfestey): www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3OWTwGdGmo&t=0s
Gary Snyder’s translations of 24 Han-shan poems are included in his little book Riprap, & Cold Mountain Poems. There are numerous other translations of Han-shan by Arthur Waley, Burton Watson, Red Pine, J.P. Seaton, etc. You can see many of them here — https://terebess.hu/zen/chang/HanshanHendricks.html
Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums is a lively novel (dedicated to Han-shan) based on Kerouac’s adventures with Gary Snyder in the Bay Area of the 1950s. All Bay Area people should read this book if you haven’t already! Despite its naivety in some regards, it presents a marvelous picture of Snyder and the Bay Area scene of the time.
Rexroth, “Sung Dynasty Culture” — www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/sung-china.htm
Rexroth, “The Poet as Translator” — (includes several translations that Rexroth particularly admires from Chinese, ancient Greek, etc.) — www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/poetry-translation.htm
Images of Hanshan and Shide (Japanese: Kanzan and Jittoku)
Basho
Our next four Asian Classics meetings will be devoted to the great haiku poet Matsuo Basho. For these meetings you should get the following three books:
Matsuo Basho, Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings, translated by Sam Hamill
Basho’s Narrow Road, translated with annotations by Hiroaki Sato
Robert Aitken, A Zen Wave: Basho’s Haiku and Zen
(essays by the noted Zen teacher)
Meanwhile, here are some recommended books if you wish to explore further in the world of Basho and of haikus in general:
R.H. Blyth, Haiku (four volumes). Still the definitive collection of haikus in English. Includes illuminating explanations of and comments on hundreds of haikus. Highly recommended.
R.H. Blyth, Japanese Life and Character in Senryu. A similar collection of senryu poems (haikus in form but with more humorous and humanistic content).
R.H. Blyth, Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics. A real gem — discover the Zen in Shakespeare and Wordsworth, and even in Dickens and Don Quixote!
Robert Hass, The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa
Kenneth Rexroth, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese
Kenneth Rexroth, One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese. These two volumes contain some haikus, but are mostly devoted to the more traditional uta/waka genre (five lines instead of three).
Donald Keene, An Anthology of Japanese Literature
I also recommend this short article by Gary Gach: “Child Mind: Teaching the Way of Haiku” — https://archive.org/details/GaryGachChildMindIssue33DialogueAustralasia/page/n1/mode/2up
Please also read these two Rexroth essays:
“Haiku and Japanese Religion” — www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/haiku.htm. Trigger warning: This review is not for the faint at heart! Rexroth has some very scathing things to say about Zen Buddhism, about haikus in general (with the partial exception of Basho), and about haikus written by Westerners. At the same time, he has some very sympathetic things to say about (non-Zen) Japanese folk religion.
“Lafcadio Hearn and Japanese Buddhism” — www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/hearn.htm. This is a longer and more nuanced discussion of Japanese Buddhism and folk culture.
Women Poets of Japan and China
At our next two meetings (October 16 and October 30) we will be reading and discussing women poets of Japan and China. You will need to have these two books:
Women Poets of Japan (a.k.a. The Burning Heart), translated by Kenneth Rexroth & Ikuko Atsumi.
Women Poets of China (a.k.a. The Orchid Boat), translated by Kenneth Rexroth & Ling Chung.
If you don’t have your copies yet, you can see some selections
here and
here.
