Reading Things Intimately
Translating Cioran again.
I am finishing translating third year of his journal, which hopefully will have done by end of next month.
And in translating, am seriously beginning to hear the French now in a way where it is talking to me, instead of me working to string it together thru a language I really like, but is connected to English and not English, also total dif grammoire —
Let Language Rule the Mule
New usage of tout, is coming at me, from Duo. Looking forward to…extending? Oh phrase humping. Stumping pumping — let yourself drool.
I lean in on it, and sometimes that means on other writers too. And I let them know it. Helps me to resort from encasement of say, bookends, stuck in like a force of nature, viola Cioran.
I can level now! As distance still expands with hope - as a measure of the sacred, which modifies codifies as capacity to love, in its own right.
For this I became very specific. To its, what, I dont know, ownership -
Cioran Wouldn’t ?
Rimbaud — its pure in its flashes of excitement. Genet, well he lives there. Burroughs and Beckett - both also cut through to with jest and humor.
This is about Philosophy of one’s own engagement with writing as Literature -
Beckett gives “off the cuff” remarks in his fiction on its association with what he is doing, in itself. I love when he does that. There is a rhetorical name for it. I will search down tonight. Its in Latham’s Handbook.
I stop and pet it.
And in Finnegans Wake its right there in the build!
Cioran doesnt find hope springing eternal ? Does he not let love in as factor, simply, as a capacity to hope ?
I have read other stuff of his. But not like this, translating journals.
Cioran: Touch of the Lush?
No, and yes. In his journal.
Not in way that seeks out the lush ? But it is there - in terms of sacred, for sure. Things come alive for him through religiousness of gesture, relationship to its historical pertinence.
But it is not so much wrt others ?
Quite often backs into it, thru supremely sublimely and the negative. I find that there is a candor that finds it as “in himself” as they say on tv.
It raids, is a maverick temptation towards honesty. And knows that it is the outcome that he is going to end up with. That, the poetic is an encumbrance for him, is something he cant escape, and that its also revelational even in its hatred.
Admits the fact that he cant cut himself off from excavating however he tries at times to smother it dead.
Personally, I think, that this was something that Beckett and Cioran both understood, and perhaps over dinner even, agreed on.
Direction
Nick gave me sheherizod. His influence is direct for me, in several spots of intention///where I feed off his guid looks. And he knows this, I remain direct with him about it. So when passes through I say hi here.
It’s something that happened to me w.r.t. poetry and rhyme and hanging on the line, that can happen, with ardor as a clarifying of intention, for what a life of writing even is, and would be for me, getting in at the goods.
Togetherness
Cioran used others too, to some extent?
Well, when he gets terrifically annoyed, certainly. But also about people he read. Emily for instance! He has already mentioned twice.
Occasionally does he talk about influence or impact of someone he knew then? Yes 3 times so far. BUT, he wouldn’t name them, he used X, except for one person he seemed to know well who died on him.
Horton Hears a Who
I began to see myself as more than a mere annoyance, but gratefully as a part-nerd in rhyme, with others where Horton hears a Who “hit the rocks” and then goes looking and finds a cave, and its pirate. An “honesty” crime.
That bend towards hungry where Dante got snagged into pictorials full stop christian tradition down through galleries of well, animal eating animal hell, and as well cartoons for fighting over heaven.
Marcel uses artwork, as a comparative, to the way people he meets look, girls generally.
Men he could be more severe even.
Yet he is princess of pee pee never lets go search for beauty as a thing he runs into, perceptibly, and it comes deliberately into his writing.
Closeness
Often land closer to Cioran — his life on the line, surrounded by horror of wars, flatness, sickness, his staunchness, the brazen stupidity of life, and the brazen beauty of the religious sublime.
Shocks me sometimes, how many times, already, I have said to myself while translating —
You fuck I went through that….