Franz Kafka – Cool and Hard

Cool and hard is the day today.
The clouds congeal.
The winds are tugging ropes.
People congeal.
The steps sound metallic
On ore stones,
And the eyes see
Wide white lakes.

In the old little town there are
Small bright Christmas houses,
Their colorful windows look out
Over the snow-blown square.
On the moonlit square
A man walks silently in the snow,
His great shadow blown up
The houses by the wind.

People who walk across dark bridges,
Past saints
With dim candles.

Clouds that drift across a grey sky
Past churches
With towers in twilight.
A man leans against the ashlar parapet
And looks into the evening water,
Hands on old stones.

– Franz Kafka, translated from the German by Johannes Beilharz (© 2020)

(A poem by Franz Kafka (1883-1924) – who is, of course, not really known for poetry – which undoubtedly places him in the literary environment of expressionism. It is contained in a letter by Kafka dated November 9, 1903, in which the 20-year-old writes to his schoolmate Oskar Pollak about “some verses” that he might “read at a good hour”.)

German original

Stefan George – I am the One

I am the One and am the Twain
I am the womb I am the sire
I am the blow and am the slain
I am the wood I am the fire
I am the seer I am the sight
I am the sheath and am the haft
I am the shadow and the right
I am the bow I am the shaft
I am the rich I am the needer
I am the semblance and the heart
I am the altar and the pleader
I am a finish and a start.

– Stefan George

Translated from the German by Carol North Valhope and Ernst Morwitz. From: Stefan George, Poems, Schocken Books, 1967 (originally published by Pantheon Books in 1943)

See the original in the preceding post.

Stefan George – Ich bin der Eine

Ich bin der Eine und bin Beide
Ich bin der zeuger bin der schooss
Ich bin der degen und die scheide
Ich bin der das opfer bin der stoss
Ich bin die sicht und bin der seher
Ich bin der bogen bin der bolz
Ich bin der altar und der fleher
Ich bin das feuer und das holz
Ich bin der reiche bin der bare
Ich bin das zeichen bin der sinn
Ich bin der schatten bin der wahre
Ich bin ein end und ein Beginn

– Stefan George

Aus: Der Stern des Bundes (1914)

Morning Digestion

Trying my best Charles B. imitation

Read Bukowski for breakfast,
including that one with the radio
he threw out the window every
time he got drunk, always breaking
the window. Then he added
something about watching a
scantily clad neighbor digging
in her garden patch just below.
I wondered if she happened to
show up, scantily clad, every
time Charles B. got drunk and
threw the radio out the window.

– Johannes Beilharz (© 2005)

Originally published at Poem Hunter.

Arrhythmie – ein Mikrogedicht von Ajo

Arrhythmie

Ich hasse die Liebe 

und hasse sie außerdem 

mit deinem Herzen.

✼ ❖ ✼ ❖ ✼ ❖ ✼ ❖ ✼ ❖ ✼ ❖ ✼ ❖ ✼ ❖ 

Aritmia

Odio el amor 

y además lo odio 

con tu corazón.

– Ajo (© 2004)

Übertragung ins Deutsche von Johannes Beilharz (© 2020)

The Wedding Guest (2018)

Radhika Apte in The Wedding Guest

The British-American thriller The Wedding Guest (2018, directed by Michael Winterbottom) became available on Sky a few weeks ago and turned out to be one of the best films they added in a while in my humble opinion.

Playing in Pakistan and India, it tells the story of the abduction of a bride (Samira, played by Indian actress Radhika Apte) shortly before her imminent wedding and various stages of flight through Amritsar, New Delhi and Goa. Jay, the kidnapper, a British national of South Asian origin, is competently played by Dev Patel.

While not an action movie, the film keeps up the suspense, revealing details of the characters as the story moves on along the roads of Pakistan and India.

Big data Q&A

“Spent about 43 minutes confusing big data.”

Q: Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?

A: As we all know, every click we make, every breath we take, is being watched over by information-hungry entities, such as Google, Facebook, Amazon that proceed to save the data collected and subsequently send their salivating algorithm dogs after them to analyze the hell out of these zillions of discrete items of information in order to obtain something that is useful, i.e. that can be monetized. We’ve all seen how it works! You search for mierda on Giggle and notice that commercial advertisements attempting to sell the same shit appear soon thereafter. You go on YouTube and play some music by artist XYZ. Next time you visit, YouTube wants you to play the same again, supplemented by other suggestions some algorithm has come up with. Why, when you look at a peeler on Amazon, some algorithm they use is quick to let you know just a few inches below that people who bought peelers also bought peeler pouches, peeler sharpeners, peeler glue and peeler storage shelves! This is called enhancing the user experience.

Q: Enough ranting about some of my favorite corporations and sites! I still don’t see where this is going.

A: To try and confuse big data, I will, for example, give likes, hearts or whatever is offered to widely diverse items in the consumer and social networks world. Hopefully this will confuse the sniffing big data dogs to some extent. If enough people do that, the companies buying big data results might eventually realize that these results are not the ultimate wisdom out there. Perhaps they’ll sink their misguided dollars into something more worthwhile eventually.

Q: Not gonna happen. Big data is mighty! The algorithms are smart and get smarter every fraction of a second.

A: That may be true. But there’ll always be a David for every Goliath. Sooner or later.

Alonzo Aglio and Bella Cipolla, First Cousins

Alonzo Aglio and Bella Cipolla, First Cousins

Polaroid photo by Johannes Beilharz

(scanned Fuji instax SQ20 print)

Available as print and for licensing from PicFair

William Carlos Williams: Komm schon!

Komm schon!

Eine andere Art von Gedanke
fader
und verzweifelter
wie jener von
Sergeant Soundso
an der Straße
in Belleau Wood:
Komm schon!
Willst du ewig
leben? –
Das
ist das Wesen
der Dichtung.
Aber sie nimmt nicht
immer
dieselbe Form an.
Größtenteils
besteht sie
daraus,
der Nachtigall
zuzuhören
oder Narren.

William Carlos Williams, Come on!, aus Pictures from Brueghel and other poems, New Directions, 1962.

Aus dem Amerikanischen von Johannes Beilharz (Copyright © 2020).

El Fendero – Paper Boat (2020) bei Bandcamp

Chris Fender, Paper Boat (2020)

From the lyrics:

Hey, I saw a Paper Boat
Tattooed on my girlfriend's leg ...

Über das Stolpern

Ein guter Stolperer fällt nicht.

(deutsches Sprichwort)

Soeben stolperte ich über die englische Version:

A stumble may prevent a fall.

Große Geister denken einfach gleich, egal in welcher Sprache.

Great minds think alike, no matter the language.

Minimale Philosophie

Filosofia minimale

Io butto
tutto

– Iself (© 2020)

Dies ist in diesem schönen sonnenverwöhnten Lande (wie auch anderswo) leider Gottes eine Philosophie, die viele Anhänger hat.

Zur Verdeutlichung für die der italienischen Sprache nicht mächtige Leserschaft hier auch gleich eine deutsche Version:

Minimale Philosophie

Auch ohne Sinn und Zweck:
ich schmeiße einfach alles weg

– Iself (© 2020)

Dancing

Ben Miller (DI Richard Poole) and Sara Martins (Camille Bordey) dancing in a scene from Death in Paradise (series 1, 2011)

Ezra Pound - Alba

Alba

Kühl wie die bleichen nassen Blätter

                                              des Maiglöckchens

Lag sie in der Morgendämmerung an meiner Seite

Translated by Johannes Beilharz (© 2020)

Note on this translation
There is a previous translation by Eva Hesse that is quoted on the Internet. She translated the word leaves as Blüten (blossoms, flowers). It seems unlikely that Ezra Pound did not know the difference between leaves and flowers, i.e. he did not require correction in German. Granted, white (the color of the flowers of lily of the valley) is paler than green (the color of the leaves), but the shape of the leaves (longish and flared) is more like the body of a woman than the flowers, which are bell-shaped (hence the German name Maiglöckchen) and round. Unless Pound really found a whitish, bell-shaped round woman by his side on that poetic morning...

– Johannes Beilharz

Peggy Guggenheim about Dorothea Tanning

Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning (1948, photo by Robert Bruce Inverarity)

Based on what she writes in her memoir, Out of This Century (1979), Peggy Guggenheim did not appreciate Dorothea Tanning very much. This might be partially due to the fact that Tanning and Guggenheim’s husband at the time, German artist Max Ernst, were having an affair.

Guggenheim writes: “I made Max work hard for this show. He had to go around to all the women, choose their paintings and carry them in the car to the gallery. He adored this, as he loved women, and some of them were very attractive. He was always interested in women who painted. There was one called Dorothea Tanning, a pretty girl from the Middle West. She was pretentious, boring, stupid, vulgar and dressed in the worst possible taste, but was quite talented and imitated Max’s painting, which flattered him immensely. She was so much on the make and pushed so hard that it was embarrassing.”

Guggenheim and Ernst eventually divorced, and he and Tanning got married in 1946 in a double ceremony with Man Ray and Juliet Browner.

The above quote is from page 233f. of Out of this Century (Anchor Books, 1980).