#bookstagtamph

Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition covers of four Patrick White titles. Bought these way back in 2003. Now the bookstores I got them from have long closed and have been replaced by other establishments. ************ Still not finished with the Vivisector, with the newer Penguin Classics edition introduced by none other than JM Coetzee, who I didn't know had transferred from South Africa to Australia. ************ "Rhoda said, and now they were neither brother and sister, young nor old, male or female, they were not the dolls parents play with, or rats reared for experiment...Whatever their souls were, and he was inclined to see them as paper kites, they soared for a brief moment, twinning and twanging together, in the pure joy of recognition." ************ The main protagonist, Hurtle, is a painter, and White uses descriptive narrative with the imagination of a twisted visual artist. The language is an early version of what he utilized for the much better written Riders in the Chariot. But it's still too early to really tell. ************ Right now, one of the epigraphs used to open the book should suffice: "He becomes beyond all others the great Invalid, the great Criminal, the great Accursed One—and the Supreme knower. For he reaches the unknown." (Arthur Rimbaud) In other words, the artist is the vivisector. ************ #books #fiction #PatrickWhite #Australia #literature #NobelPrize #NobelPrizeInLiterature #igreads #igbooks #instabooks #instareads #bookstagram #bookstagtamph #booklove #booknerd #bookporn #bookgram #bibliophile

"At a quarter to five the sun rose on the horizon. Earlier I had been frightened by the night, but now it was the new day's sun that seemed like an enemy: a gigantic and implacable enemy that came to tear up my blistered skin and drive me crazy with hunger and thirst. I cursed the sun. I cursed the day. I cursed my luck at having survived nine days adrift instead of being allowed to die of hunger or be devoured by the sharks." ************ #books #fiction #nonfiction #literature #GabrielGarciaMarquez #Gabo #Colombia #NobelPrize #NobelPrizeInLiterature #igreads #igbooks #instabooks #instareads #bookstagram #bookstagtamph #booklove #booknerd #bookporn #bookgram #bibliophile

Jean-Marie Le Clézio with his wife, Paris, 1965. By Henri Cartier-Bresson. ************ #photography #portraits #HenriCartierBresson #JMLeClezio #NobelPrize #NobelPrizeInLiterature #igreads #igbooks #instabooks #instareads #bookstagram #bookstagtamph #booklove #booknerd #bookporn #bookgram #bibliophile

Congratulations, Bob Dylan! ************ Got this book a few years back, browsed through its pages a bit, and unlike my other poet friends, I'm really not that surprised that he won the Nobel in Literature. I don't follow the pundits, nor the bookies. Have you tried listening to his songs carefully and reading the books he has written? ************ It doesn't make sense to compare him to Toni Morrison, or even to William Faulkner. All I can say is that even the best verse can only come close to the sound of music. ************ #books #nonfiction #literature #BobDylan #RobertAllenZimmerman #NobelPrize #NobelPrizeInLiterature #igreads #igbooks #instabooks #instareads #bookstagram #bookstagtamph #booklove #booknerd #bookporn #bookgram #bibliophile

"I, with legs crossed along the daylight, watch / The variegated fists of clouds that gather over / The uncouth features of this, my prone island. // Meanwhile the steamers which divide horizons prove / Us lost; / Found only / In tourist booklets, behind binoculars; / Found in the blue reflection of eyes / That have known cities and think us here happy. // Time creeps over the patient who are too long patient, / So I, who have made one choice, / Discover that my boyhood has gone over. // And my life, too early of course for the profound cigarette, / The turned doorhandle, the knife turning / In the bowels of the hours, must not be made public / Until I have learnt to suffer / In accurate iambics..." (From "Prelude") ************ There is no beginning as accurate and close to what I feel as Walcott's opening. Lyrical, incantory, and full of audacity: thank you for granting me courage to forge ahead. ************ #books #poetry #poems #literature #DerekWalcott #SaintLucia #Antilles #NobelPrize #NobelPrizeInLiterature #igreads #igbooks #instabooks #instareads #bookstagram #bookstagtamph #booklove #booknerd #bookporn #bookgram #bibliophile

"The laughter of the Lesser Lynx / Is often insincere: / It pays to be polite, he thinks, / If Royalty is near. // So when the Lion steals his food / Or kicks him from behind, / He smiles, of course – but oh, the rude / Remarks that cross his mind!" ("The Lesser Lynx" by E.V. Rieu) ************ Sometimes it takes the honesty of a child to tell the truth – without tact or ruse. But, oh, that doesn't mean that literature for children isn't better off read and heard by malicious adults! ************ First published by Puffin Books in 1958. Cover and illustrations by Christine Thwaites. ************ #books #poetry #poems #childrenspoetry #literature #EleanorFarjeon #JamesReeves #EVRieu #IanSerraillier #PuffinBooks #igreads #igbooks #instabooks #instareads #bookstagram #bookstagtamph #booklove #booknerd #bookporn #bookgram #bibliophile

"Since the beginning of the century / we have been discussing whether poetry is inner / or outer. At first the inner won, / then the outer counterattacked furiously / and after years they have come to an agreement / which won't last for the outer is / armed to the teeth." ("Poetry (In Italy)", as translated by G. Singh) ************ I have had this book since 2004. The neighborhood bookstore I bought it from has long since closed, and this translation has been superceded by a superior one by William Arrowsmith (see previous post, and whose translation I bought through a waiting list in 2012). ************ It's a bit obvious which side of the aesthetic battle Montale is on. I think the tension is even more pertinent these days when everything read or publicly published is deemed a performance. When relevance is as fleeting as a Snapchat video. Can anyone escape it? Is the interior life obsolete and dead? ************ As long as poetry and literature of quality is written, translated, and read, I am on the side of the hopeful. Of what endures. ************ #books #poetry #poems #EugenioMontale #Italy #NobelPrize #NobelPrizeInLiterature #igreads #igbooks #instabooks #instareads #bookstagram #bookstagtamph #booklove #booknerd #bookporn #bookgram #bibliophile

"At times, because of dampness, / gunpowder fails to flash, and sometimes / catches without matches or flint. / A pocket lighter with one drop / of fluid could do the trick. And anyway / there's no need for fire at all, / indeed, a good sub-zero curbs / that boring great-grand-mother, Inspiration. / She was none too spry a few days ago / but she managed to disguise her wrinkles. / Now, ashamed of herself, she seems : to be skulking in the folds of the curtain. / She's lied too offen, now let darkness, / void, nothingness fall on her page. / Rely on this, my scribbling friend: / Trust the darkness when the light lies." ("Fire and Darkness") ************ After so many months, am finally done with this thick tome. There were many times that Montale's poetry made me laugh, times when I had to look up words and references, times when I had to reread a few pieces several times before I could get near to their meaning — or at least get the most juice and insight and, yes, light out of his words. But mostly every poem burned slow and sure. ************ Reading and writing poetry is such a lonely and mostly unrewarded vocation. But that doesn't mean that it isn't rewarding. In verses we reach out and communicate in deepest conversation: through the tears, the thunder, and even through the tedium. ************ #books #poetry #poems #EugenioMontale #Italy #NobelPrize #NobelPrizeInLiterature #igreads #igbooks #instabooks #instareads #bookstagram #bookstagtamph booklove #booknerd #bookporn #bookgram #bibliophile