thought, loss, survival
Dec. 23rd, 2006 08:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethReading lit books again, random quoteage:
in spite of all the hardships she thought she had probably been happiest during the Second World War, because 'It was the time when all our people were together, and knew they were fighting an enemy outside that was evil'.
In my head, this connects to Torchwood. WWII references acting as contrast. After the war becomes the time when there's nothing to fight, just lost people trying to make their way in a new world. And why Torchwood might conceptualise alien contact as alien invasion, because isn't it so much simpler that way? But Jack doesn't think quite like that. Mostly.
... The tendency to make everything All about Torchwood is just because it ate my brain.
Also if fandom gets in a fight with lit I know which one will win.
Actually the more I read this essay the more bits I'm connecting with. It has poems in it, ones I read and they actually mean something.
I'm much out the habit of reading poetry, and attempting to start again these last couple of weeks it all comes out sort of 'blah blah blah tree blah blah blah sunrise', you know?
Not today though.
going to type in here a bunch of bits from the library book.
Women writing and writing about women
essay 'Poetry and conscience'
Trying to dig out who wrote what...
Aliger, "Two"
Once again they've quarrelled on a tram
shamelessly indifferent to strangers.
I can't hide how much I envy them.
I can't take my eyes off their behaviour.
They don't even know their good fortune,
and not knowing is a part of their luck.
Think of it. They are together. Alive.
And have the time to sort things out and make up.
Regret sounds a stronger note than loneliness here, and there are other lyrics in which the main preoccupation is the unhappiness of being a survivor.
'It was not so simple as they think now'
In Aliger's poem to Lermontov she is writing not only about the difference in fate between her life and that of the great poet who died youg, but offering the apology of a survivor, who feels that the price of survival has been to live through more than anyone could be expected to endure:
Aliger
"Portrait of Lermontov"
My twenty-six year old ensign,
please forgive me, please forgive
the twice as many years I've lived
in this bright world, where I still am.
Forgive me, please forgive me, for
every feast and every day, it's
been my fortune to have more,
twice as many more than you!
And yet if I've had twice your days
there has ben room in them for twice
as many fears and injuries.
Who knows which century it was
easier to bear? Between us
who was luckier? What weighs more,
heavy blows the living feel, or
grass that's growing overhead?
You won't answer, since you're dead
And I won't answer ... I'm alive.
just a snip of the next one, because it's a couple of pages:
Yunna Moritz
In Memory of Francois Rabelais
When laughter beats in your ears,
your soul knows it is immortal.
The freedom is like a mouthful
of wine a breathing space
a forgetting of this life's brevity.
The saddest truth can be funny.
Now go back to your anthill,
put coffee on the stove there.
Chew at your greens for supper.
Enjoy the simplest flavour,
and as you do so savour
the strangeness of carrying on!
in spite of all the hardships she thought she had probably been happiest during the Second World War, because 'It was the time when all our people were together, and knew they were fighting an enemy outside that was evil'.
In my head, this connects to Torchwood. WWII references acting as contrast. After the war becomes the time when there's nothing to fight, just lost people trying to make their way in a new world. And why Torchwood might conceptualise alien contact as alien invasion, because isn't it so much simpler that way? But Jack doesn't think quite like that. Mostly.
... The tendency to make everything All about Torchwood is just because it ate my brain.
Also if fandom gets in a fight with lit I know which one will win.
Actually the more I read this essay the more bits I'm connecting with. It has poems in it, ones I read and they actually mean something.
I'm much out the habit of reading poetry, and attempting to start again these last couple of weeks it all comes out sort of 'blah blah blah tree blah blah blah sunrise', you know?
Not today though.
going to type in here a bunch of bits from the library book.
Women writing and writing about women
essay 'Poetry and conscience'
Trying to dig out who wrote what...
Aliger, "Two"
Once again they've quarrelled on a tram
shamelessly indifferent to strangers.
I can't hide how much I envy them.
I can't take my eyes off their behaviour.
They don't even know their good fortune,
and not knowing is a part of their luck.
Think of it. They are together. Alive.
And have the time to sort things out and make up.
Regret sounds a stronger note than loneliness here, and there are other lyrics in which the main preoccupation is the unhappiness of being a survivor.
'It was not so simple as they think now'
In Aliger's poem to Lermontov she is writing not only about the difference in fate between her life and that of the great poet who died youg, but offering the apology of a survivor, who feels that the price of survival has been to live through more than anyone could be expected to endure:
Aliger
"Portrait of Lermontov"
My twenty-six year old ensign,
please forgive me, please forgive
the twice as many years I've lived
in this bright world, where I still am.
Forgive me, please forgive me, for
every feast and every day, it's
been my fortune to have more,
twice as many more than you!
And yet if I've had twice your days
there has ben room in them for twice
as many fears and injuries.
Who knows which century it was
easier to bear? Between us
who was luckier? What weighs more,
heavy blows the living feel, or
grass that's growing overhead?
You won't answer, since you're dead
And I won't answer ... I'm alive.
just a snip of the next one, because it's a couple of pages:
Yunna Moritz
In Memory of Francois Rabelais
When laughter beats in your ears,
your soul knows it is immortal.
The freedom is like a mouthful
of wine a breathing space
a forgetting of this life's brevity.
The saddest truth can be funny.
Now go back to your anthill,
put coffee on the stove there.
Chew at your greens for supper.
Enjoy the simplest flavour,
and as you do so savour
the strangeness of carrying on!