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To ifiaskaquestion: Chatterton is much better than my memory of him...back in the day. He made an intellectual u-turn after the "dullard" incident. Here is a specific and not-for-profit website dedicated to him....http://human.ntu.ac.uk/chatterton/ Let me know if this answers your question. How did you come by your interest in this particular poet? quasimodo1
"The Sleeper" by Edgar Allan Poe
At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin molders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!- and lo! where lies
Irene, with her Destinies!
O, lady bright! can it be right-
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop-
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully- so fearfully-
Above the closed and fringed lid
'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,
That, o'er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come O'er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress,
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness!
The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
For ever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!
My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold-
Some vault that oft has flung its black
And winged panels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o'er the crested palls,
Of her grand family funerals-
Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone-
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne'er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.
Thankyou for the link on Chatterton... i have been searching for websites about him.
He seems to be mentioned by other romantic poets as a wasted genius, that's how i lead to him.
x
For Ifiaskaquestion: http://tkline.pgcc.net/PITBR/French/...m#_Toc24461586 the best link in English... quasimodo1
Thankyou for the link, much appreciated. May i be so bold as to ask you for one more this time by the Stephen Mallarme ?
If i ask a question... please don't sigh x
To Ifiaskaquestion: No sighing here but his poetry is not very accessable. See neglected poets thread for today's entry/ Stephen Mallarme. quasimodo1
Quasimodo what is your opinion on Friedrich Schillers poetry ?
or anyone elses ? x
I don't know that I would consider Mallarmé to be "unaccessible"... although his poetry can certainly be quite demanding... requiring some real effort to wrap your brain around it. But then this can be true of Donne, Milton, Dickinson... a whole lot of poetry. I find his earlier work easy enough. It certainly falls into the tradition of the French Symbolists:
Anguish
I come tonight not to conquer your body, O creature
In whom course a people's sins, nor to burrow
In your tainted hair a dismal tempest
Beneath the fatal ennui poured by my kiss.
I ask of your bed the heavy sleep without dreams
Of remorse hovering beneath the unfamiliar curtains
And which you too may savor after your dark lies'
You who know more of the void than the dead.
For vice, gnawing at my innate nobility
Has branded me as you with it's sterility,
But while in your breast of stone there lives
A heart that the tooth of no crime can despoil,
I flee, pale, broken, haunted by my shroud,
In fear of dying when I sleep alone.
Sea Breeze
The flesh is sad, alas! and I've read all the books.
To escape! To flee away! I sense the birds drunk
With joy to be amid foreign foam and skies!
Naught, neither ancient gardens the skies reflect
Can contain this heart, steeped in the sea
O nights! nor the solitary light of my lamp
On the blank sheet which its whiteness shields
Nor the young wife nursing her child.
I shall depart! Steamer with your swaying masts,
Lift anchor for an exotic landscape!
An ennui, ravaged by cruel expectations,
Still believes in the final adieux of handkerchiefs!
And, perhaps, the masts inviting the tempests
Are such as a gale bends toward shipwrecks
Lost, without masts, no masts, no fertile isles...
But, O my heart!, listen to the sailor's song!
Stéphane Mallarmé
tr. by Daisy Aldan
Sky Blue Press
Later poems by Mallarmé grow increasingly dense... almost abstract... until his most innovative work, Un Coup De Dés (A Throw of the Dice). This poem was the supreme realization of his continual fascination with how a poem appeared visually upon the page (Mallarmé was very concerned with the notion that a single sonnet, for example, should not be clustered with two or three other works upon the page... or worse yet, cropped off and finished upon the next. In Un Coup De Dés Mallarmé attempted to create a poem... a work of literature which one did not experience in a linear manner (from start to finish) but rather as one might experience a a work of visual art... where certain more central elements drew our eye first because of their visual prominence... and then our eye was free to wonder at will and explore secondary and tertiary passages... recognizing certain repetitions and continually returning to the focal point. This poem spreads out over some 20+ pages. A look at two pages can be seen here:
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...d/mallarme.jpg
Some of the most "abstract" and dense of Mallarmé's works are to be found in his poem/poem fragments composed in response to his son, Anatole's death. Mallarmé was considered the ultimate "Olympian"... a "formalist"... a poet who did not create poetry as some sort of personal expression of feelings in the Romantic sense... but rather as a creator of beautiful, perfect works of literary art. His son's death, to a great extent, was completely beyond the bounds of his art... and he left the entire project unfinished. The fragments, however, have gained a contemporary audience among those who no longer find the fragmentary shocking. The poems remind me of some late works by Paul Celan:
2.
better
as if he (when)
still were ---
whatever they may have been,
of epithets
worthy- etc.
the hours when
you were and
were not
3.
sick in
springtime
dead in fall
---it is the sun
---
the wave
idea the cough
6.
did not know
mother, and son did
not know me! ---
--- the image of myself
other than myself
borne off
in death!
Stephane Mallarmé
tr. Paul Auster
North Point Press
what is your opinion on Friedrich Schillers poetry ?
I certainly love what Beethoven did with An die Freude. I haven't come across much of Schiller's poetry in English translation... and my high-school German is beyond "rusty". Hölderlin's poetry was magnificently dealt with by several brilliant translators... especially Michael Hamburger. I only wish that Schiller had been so well served.
Here are some links to his poetry translated into English :
http://www.schillerinstitute.org/tra...il_1poems.html
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6794/6794-h/6794-h.htm
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6795/6795-h/6795-h.htm
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6796/6796-h/6796-h.htm
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6797/6797-h/6797-h.htm
Tell me what you think of it x
To Ifiaskaquestion: I have to say, Stlukesguild has eclipsed me here. Let me take another look at someone I hardly remember. Have to remark that Stlukesguild's avatar reminds me of something from antiquity...but what? quasi
The Division of the World
.................................................. ..........................
“Take thence the world!” call’d Zeus from his high summit
To all mankind. “Take, that which yours should be.
As heritage eterne to you I grant it—”
Divide it ye, yet brotherly!”
Then did all hands to preparations scurry,
Both young and old industrious became.
The farmer seiz’d the produce from the country,
The Junker through the woods stalk’d game.
The merchant in his stores had riches hoarded,
The abbot chose the noble vintage wine,
The king had all the roads and bridges boarded
And claim’d: “the tithe of all is mine.”
Quite late, just as division was accomplish’d
The poet near’d, he came from far away—”
Ah! nothing more remain’d to be distinguish’d
A lord o’er everything had sway!
“Ah! Woe is me! for why should I then solely
Forgotten be, I, thy most faithful son?”
Thus did he make his accusation loudly
And threw himself fore Jove’s high throne.
“If thou to dwell in dreamland have decided,”
Replied the god, “then quarrel not with me.
Where wert thou then, when I the world divided?”
“I was,“ the poet said, “by thee.”
“Mine eyes did hang on thy expression,
Upon they heaven’s harmony my ear—”
Forgive the spirit, which, by thy reflection
Enrapt, did lose the earthly sphere.”
“What can be done?“ said Zeus, “for all is given;
The crops, the hunt, the marts are no more free.
Wouldst thou abide with me within my heaven—”
Whene’er thou com’st, ’twill open be to thee.”
http://www.literary-quotations.com/g/goethe.html Also here find Schiller's quatations. You can learn something from these references but surely not all. One of Schiller's plays was made into a classical overture, something about an aristocrat and commoner, an apple and an arrow.