Think About It 113: SIMONE WEIL

 

Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection.  Keep your isolation. The day, if it ever comes when you are given true affection, there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse.

 

Gravity and Grace (1947)

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read about the life and work of 

French philosopher, Christian mystic and social 

activist SIMONE WEIL [1909 – 1943]:

 

 

 

https://iep.utm.edu/weil/

 

 

 

 

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Poet of the Month 102: ALEXANDER BLOK

 

 

ALEXANDER BLOK

1880 – 1921

 

 

 

 

 

IN THE RESTAURANT

 

 

I shall never forget it (there was or was not

Such an evening): the sunset's declining

And dwindling fires had consumed and divided

      the sky;

In the yellow light, street lamps were shining.

 

I was there, in a window seat.  The place

      was crowded,

And the fiddles sang amorously,

And I sent you a single black rose in a glass

Of champagne as gold as the sky.

 

You glanced over my way.  Embarrassed, but boldly,

I met your cold stare, and I bowed.

And you said to your escort, 'That man's in love,

      too,'

In a tone that was cuttingly loud.

 

Straightaway, as in answer, the strings began

      playing,

All the fiddles struck up in the band…

But a young girl's contempt was the answer you

      gave me,

A scarce visible move of the hand.

 

Of a sudden you left, like a startled bird,

You passed me, as light as my dream…

Just a trace of perfume, and your eyelashes

      fluttered,

And your silks whispered soft in alarm.

 

But you still watch from the depths of

      the mirrors,

And, while watching, you called 'Catch your

      prize!'

And her necklace jingled as the gypsy girl,

      dancing,

Wailed of love to the sunset skies.

 

 

 

19 April 1910

 

 

Translated by 

ALEX MILLER

 

 

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to read about the life and work of 

Russian poet ALEXANDER BLOK:

 

 

 

https://www.rbth.com/arts/332863-alexander-blok-russian-poet

 

 

 

 

 

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Think About It 112: CHARMIAN CLIFT

 

Driving out from Sydney on a weekend lately I looked at the bush again for the first time in a long while, and it frightened me.  So intimidating it is, so apparently monotonous, so uncompromising in colour and texture.  It does not beckon or invite, as green woods do, and coppices, and noble forests of beech and oak and larch and fir.  Its mysteries are not of the romantic order, but freakish, spiny, spare and unearthly strange.  And so utterly indifferent.  I thought then about the reluctant founding fathers and how it must have seemed to them, rejected if their own familiar country, rejected of their own familiar society, but never so utterly rejected as by this utterly rejecting landscape that they had never even asked to see, let alone to engage in combat for sheer survival.  From a real adversary courage flows into you.  This adversary is too awesome: it simply does not care.

      Our beginnings are, at the best, ignominious.  Little to celebrate in the founding of a colony that was founded only because it was so far away that it could be conveniently forgotten.  Founded parsimoniously, grudgingly, without aspiration, enthusiasm, or the high wild audacity of reckless vision.  Founded to clear the hulks and prisons, to forestall the French, and perhaps to grow flax.

 

 Australia Day (Newspaper column, c 1970) 

 

 

 

 

Use the links below to read essays about the life and work of CHARMIAN CLIFT by her biographer NADIA WHEATLEY and the writer, critic and editor KERRYN GOLDSWORTHY:

 

 

 

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/clift-charmian-9764

 

 

 

http://austlit.blogspot.com.au/2009/01/very-long-post-about-charmian-clift.html

 

 

 

 

 

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The Write Advice 220: ANTHONY BURGESS

 

I am by trade a novelist.  It is, I think, a harmless trade, though it is not everywhere considered a respectable one.  Novelists put dirty language into the mouths of their characters, and they show these characters fornicating or going to the toilet.  Moreover, it is not a useful trade, as is that of the carpenter or pastrycook.  The novelist passes the time for you between one useful action and another, he helps to fill the gaps that come in the serious fabric of living.  He is a mere entertainer, a sort of clown.  He mimes, he makes grotesque gestures, he is pathetic or comic and sometimes both, he sends words spinning through the air like coloured balls.

      His use of words is not to be taken too seriously.  The President of the United States uses words, the physician or garage mechanic or army general or philosopher uses words, and these words seem to relate the real world, a world in which taxes have to be levied and then avoided, cars have to run, sicknesses to be made well, great thoughts thought and decisive battles engaged.  No creator of plots and personages, however great, is to be thought of as a serious thinker — not even Shakespeare.  Indeed, it is hard to know what the imaginative writer really does think, since he is hidden behind his scenes and his characters.  And when the characters start to think, and express their thoughts, these are not necessarily to be thought of as the writer's own… Even the tragic dramatist remains a clown, blowing a sad tune on a battered trombone.  And then his tragic mood is over and he becomes a buffoon, tumbling about and walking on his hands.  Not to be taken seriously.

 

'The Clockwork Condition' (1973, unpublished until 2012)

 

 

 

 

Use the link below to visit the website of THE INTERNATIONAL ANTHONY BURGESS FOUNDATION, an English-based organisation which 'encourages and supports public and scholarly interest in all aspects of the life and work of Anthony Burgess.'  It also operates an archive/performance space in his home town of Manchester.



https://www.anthonyburgess.org/

 

 

 

 

 

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