and how often do we need mountains

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“I caught sight of a splendid Misses. She had handkerchiefs and kisses. She had eyes and yellow shoes she had everything to choose and she chose me. In passing through France she wore a Chinese hat and so did I. In looking at the sun she read a map and so did I. . . . In loving the blue sea she had a pain. And so did I. In loving me she of necessity thought first. And so did I. How prettily we swim. Not in water. Not on land. But in love. How often do we need trees and hills. Not often. And how often do we need mountains. Not very often.”

(Gertrude Stein, from “A Sonatina Followed by Another”, quoted in the preface to Davenport’s Sappho.)

43.

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Be bold! That’s one way
Of getting through life.
So I turn upon her
And point out that,
Faced with the wickedness
Of things, she does not shiver.
I prefer to have, after all,
Only what pleases me.
Are you so deep in misery
That you think me fallen?
You say I’m lazy; I’m not,
Nor any of my kin-people.
I know how to love those
Who love me, how to hate.
My enemies I overwhelm
With abuse. The ant bites!
The oracle said to me:
“Return to the city, reconquer.
It is almost in ruins.
With your spear give it glory.
Reign with absolute power,
The admiration of me.
After this long voyage,
Return to us from Gortyne.”
Pasture, fish, nor vulture
Were you, and I, returned,
Seek an honest woman
Ready to be a good wife.
I would hold your hand,
Would be near you, would have run
All the way to your house.
I cannot. The ship went down,
And all my wealth with it.
The salvagers have no hope.
You whom the soldiers beat,
You who are all but dead,
How the gods love you!
And I, alone in the dark,
I was promised the light.

(Archilochos, pp. 18–19 in Guy Davenport’s Carmina Archilochi.)

back to metcalf

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“A unique poem or narrative may have a good deal more than what we call voice; or there may be a good deal more embodied than the term implies. The realized work is an organic animal, impinging itself, possibly, on all the senses, but primarily, of course, on sight and sound: the layout of the language on the page (and here the designer and the printer collaborate with the author) – and the appeal to the inner ear, the way we find ourselves hearing it as we read.

In a curious way, there is verification of what I’m talking about, in the appeal to the eye: I refer to the radical transformations a piece of writing goes through, in the journey from gestation to birth. A hand-written manuscript is one thing; run up on the typewriter it is something organically different. This is not often recognized, or comes to one as a shock: that the mode of presentation may fundamentally affect the substance of what it presented. The next transformation is from typescript to galley proofs; and when these arrive on the author’s desk, he may feel a curious mixture of loss and pride: the work is distancing, but it is coming nearer to its own final realization. The final transformation, of course, is from proofs to book. The work is at last born.”

(Paul Metcalf, “The Eye Hears, the Voice Looks”, pp. 55–56 in From Quarry Road.)

against ideas

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“10 December 1858

The sadness and melancholy of modern times spring from the accumulation of books, in other words from the growth of ideas. The idea is the old age of the spirit and the disease of the mind.”

(Pages from the Goncourt Journal, trans. Robert Baldick.)

one dancing

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“The fourth was one who in a way was one dancing. He was in a way being one doing that thing. He was one in a way completely meaning that thing completely meaning being one being dancing. He was in a way then dancing. He was one being one asking and answering in dancing being asking. He was one asking in dancing being existing. He was one answering in dancing being existing. He was one in a way dancing that is he was one coming to be one asking and answering. He was one asking. Dancing was existing. He was one answering. Dancing was existing. He was one asking and answering. He was one meaning that thing meaning that dancing had come to be existing. He was one not dancing. He certainly was not dancing. Any one could be one dancing. He was not then dancing. He was then meaning the thing meaning that something is existing and that something is one thing. In a way he was doing nothing that was not something that was meaning something had been existing, that dancing had been existing. He could be one dancing. Dancing was existing.”

(Gertrude Stein, from “Orta or One Dancing”, pp. 290–1 in the Library of America Writings 1903–1936.)

textuality

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“. . . we are only beginning to see in certain bodies of work not only the words but the process of composing. For Stein and others – one thinks of the poet Susan Howe’s variant readings of the poems of Emily Dickinson – the word text includes that process. The energy of a piece comes in part from the act of writing, which enters it as value that can be read, just as hues and brush strokes can be read in a painting. A text must be transcribed with attention to the evidence of its making. Print, while it cannot always reproduce that process, need not wipe it out. Inside a text are the lines that carry the words, the hand moving on paper, line breaks and spaces dictated by notebook or leaf, size and folds of paper, pen or pencil forming words, the shape of a draft visible in the way it is copied into a notebook, and even the effort to end a work in the space of one notebook.”

(Ulla E. Dydo, p. 7 in the introduction to A Stein Reader.)

the audience

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“In the manuscript of Identity A Poem [Gertrude Stein] made a personal comment about her frustration in a sentence that she rightly eliminated. ‘I know now when one is [xd creating] writing and nothing has been printed and therefore there is no audience every single word every scrap of writing is important because there being no audience.’ In the deleted sentence she had already revised ‘creating’ to ‘writing.’ ”

(Ulla E. Dydo, p. 5 in the introduction to A Stein Reader.)

hammer without a nail

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“But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying billows they almost touched; – at that instant, a red arm and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.”

(Melville, Moby-Dick, chapter XCCCV, “The Chase – Third Day”.)

for so long

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“ ‘Thank heavens it’s all over now.’

‘What is?’

‘My youth. It took too long and got in my way.’

‘In your way Mr Thirst? How do you mean?’

‘It went on for so long,’ said Thirst. ‘I had about thirty years of it. You know what I mean. Experiment, experiment, experiment. And now . . .’

‘Ah!’ whispered someone.’ ”

(Mervyn Peake, Titus Alone, p. 837 in the Overlook edition of The Gormenghast Novels.)