“I would have preferred to sing the blues in some smoke-filled hangout than spend the nights of my life scrabbling through language like a madwoman.”

In her 17 years of writing Pizarnik made a huge impact on Spanish language poetry, taking it down to its darkest depths and abandoning it there, leaving one of the most fascinating legacies in Argentine literature.

(READ MORE: Alejandra Pizarnik: The Darkest Legacy Left | The Argentina Independent)

Translation Thursday!

It’s our day to celebrate works in translation. Are you a bilingual/multilingual fan?

I’m currently reading Edith Grossman’s translation of Cervantes’s Don Quixote, and falling in love with the adventure all over again. Here’s a look at the opening line (i.e. the first line of Chapter One, ignoring the novel’s prologue-ish bits):

Original Spanish (via Project Gutenberg):

El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha

Capítulo primero. Que trata de la condición y ejercicio del famoso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha

En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor.

Our hero Edith Grossman translates:

Don Quixote

Chapter One. Which describes the condition and profession of the famous gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha

Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.

Commentary:

Don Quixote is all about play, and Grossman’s translation helpfully points out for us that nag (i.e. a horse, esp. one that is old or in poor health) in Spanish is rocín. Hence the name of Don Quixote’s famous nag: Rocinante!

Did you know? Don Quixote was voted the best book of all time in 2002!

Alejandra Pizarnik, 1936-1972.

Last night, The Common Magazine held its fundraiser The Common in the City at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

The Common is printed twice a year at Amherst College. Its mission? “Finding the extraordinary in the common has long been the mission of literature. Inspired by this mission and the role of the town common, a public gathering place for the display and exchange of ideas, The Common seeks to recapture an old idea. The Common publishes fiction, essays, poetry, documentary vignettes, and images that embody particular times and places both real and imagined; from deserts to teeming ports; from Winnipeg to Beijing; from Earth to the Moon: literature and art powerful enough to reach from there to here. In short, we seek a modern sense of place.”

Although only on Issue 5 now, The Common has published a range of established essayists, poets, and writers, and its editorial board includes such powerhouse names as Claire Messud, Mary Jo Salter, Jim Shepard, and James Wood. The mag is, in short, impressive. And beautiful! Have you seen the elegant design?

It was a pleasant evening of great conversation, lively tunes from NYC Hot 3 providing music and delicious canapés from Swine. Egypt-born writer André Aciman, author of the recent essay collection Alibis, also read from his new novel Harvard Square out from W.W. Norton.

I chatted with Jen Acker, The Common’s founding editor, about her recent trip to the NYU Abu Dhabi campus. About Abu Dhabi, she mentioned that she’d “not been anywhere that’s so wildly diverse,” describing the city as a hub of cultural start-ups. Read more about her impressions of Abu Dhabi here!

Then follow The Common on Twitter at @commonmag!

RIFFLE SPOTLIGHT!

We had a chat with Riffle member and blogger Gary over at The Parrish Lantern. We talked about my favorite subject: books!

1. Which books are you raving about right now?

Satantango by Laszlo Krasznahorkai. Traveler of the Century by Andrés Neuman. Landscape with Yellow Birds by José Angel Valente.

2. Which author would you love to grab a drink with?

Sjón, a fantastic writer and songwriter (collaborated with Bjork), and John Siddique (I owe him beer).

3. What’s the weirdest book or literary fact you’ve come across recently?

Weirdest book (but in a good way): The End of My Tether by Neil Astley.

Weirdest fact: The only thing I can think of is that the writer Diego Marani while working as a translator for the Council of the European Union, invented Europanto, a mock international auxiliary language.

4. What’s your favorite part about writing The Parrish Lantern?

The reading then finding a way into writing about the book. For example when writing about George Perec’s A Void, it was trying to use the same constraints (the lack of the vowel E). What started as an idea became a 500-word challenge which took me about a month of evenings.

5. What review/feature would you recommend to a first-time visitor of The Parrish Lantern?

Check out the PomesAllSizes page. Or if poetry is not your thing just check out a title from the index and if I’m lucky and the visitor likes a glass of malt with their reading, pay a visit to Ye Olde Parrish Lantern and say Hi.

6. What song are you jamming to now?

Been listening to Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’s new album “Push the Sky Away” although my favorite listening is probably Tom Waits or David Sylvian or or or…

Thanks so much for having this lovely interview with us! Make sure to check out the Parrish Lantern: http://parrishlantern.blogspot.co.uk

Follow Gary on Twitter at @ParrishLantern!

When you join Riffle, you can follow him here, too! 

Here’s a glimpse of one of Gary’s lists:

(Source: liveluvcreate.com)

I must have read Waiting for Godot – of course – a hundred times. Every time I go back to Beckett he seems more subversive, not less; his works make me feel more uncomfortable than they did before. The unsettling idea, most explicit in Godot, that life is habit – that it is all just a series of motions devoid of meaning – never gets any easier. (via Nick Clegg: My hero Samuel Beckett | Books | The Guardian)

“The tears of the world are a constant quantity…” Samuel Beckett, “Waiting for Godot”

(Source: liveluvcreate.com)

sydneyflapper:

Le Petit Echo de la Mode 3 October 1926 previews the Autumn - Winter styles for 1926 - 27

Le Petit Echo de la Mode

The French fashion magazine Le Petit Echo de La Mode was published for over 100 years.

Founded in Paris by Charles Huon de Penanster in 1879, the last issue was on the newstands in 1983, having been published weekly throughout (most of) that time.

It began as a weekly, illustrated newspaper featuring the modes and manners of the day, over time it was transformed into a magazine with a smaller but glossier format, similar to the fashion magazines of today.

Popularity of Echo de la Mode

The importance and influence of the publication can be seen from the distribution figures, which rose from around 200,000 a week in the early years to a peak of 1 million in the 1960s.

Although this could not be sustained for ever, sales began to tail off and then in the early 1980s it was sadly no longer viable, so was withdrawn altogether.

Read more HERE!

Opening night approacheth! Roll on up to the mansion in style, brothers and sisters.