other_life

bioconfused
hermetic corpus + adjacent academic literatures... tryna get into clown college... gonna study the clown canon... writing an essay ab how i wanted magical powers As A Little Boy and by ways it led me to be SUPER INTERESTED in the history and philosophy of religion, religion as transfigured magic...
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Piers the Plowman. JH Prynne says it's among the greatest poems in any language.

"In a somer seson, whan soft was the sonne,/ I shope me in shroudes, as I a shepe were,/In habite as an heremite, vnholy of workes/ went wide in this world, wondres to here"

Rather you than me m8
 

jenks

thread death
Piers the Plowman. JH Prynne says it's among the greatest poems in any language.

"In a somer seson, whan soft was the sonne,/ I shope me in shroudes, as I a shepe were,/In habite as an heremite, vnholy of workes/ went wide in this world, wondres to here"

I love Piers - in fact a lot of that medieval stuff - Gawain poet is a particular favourite. I am guessing you have already read Villion and Cavalcante.
 

luka

Well-known member
I love Piers - in fact a lot of that medieval stuff - Gawain poet is a particular favourite. I am guessing you have already read Villion and Cavalcante.

Not really. Obviously Pound is always on about them but it's different cos I have to read it in translation you don't get the magic of seeing this very early iteration of English
 

jenks

thread death
Not really. Obviously Pound is always on about them but it's different cos I have to read it in translation you don't get the magic of seeing this very early iteration of English

I think you're right about the magic - I had a colleague who was an expert on anglo-saxon and he used to be able to recite whole chunks, he really was a bard and quite magical. He died about five years ago but I love the fact that he still exists on youtube:
 
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other_life

bioconfused
Have you read The Golden Bough?

i had the opportunity to buy it recently on this visit... im a fool. it was an abridged version though, but a new one. i bought scholem's 'origin of the kabbalah', jodorowsky + costa's 'way of the tarot' and a marseilles pack instead.
maybe soon
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
still reading paul gilroy against race: imagining political culture beyond the colour line. no way to summarise it but his main contention is that fascism was the main *cultural* revolution of the 20th century and this inadvertently, willingly or unwillingly intersected with the fall of black culture from the godly to the profane. He's not arguing that hip hop is fascist though, absolutely not.
 
James Elroy American Tabloid is so dense. About as dense as I rarely feel like reading. Probably take me a whole year as 50 pages has taken me two weeks. Great stuff when you're in the mood though.

This is such a good book. Sequel is a bit iffy but man, must have read Tabloid five times! Agree about the density of language though, took me about 150 pages to get into the swing of it.

Would like to offer more of an opinion but if you're not finished I won't.
 

jenks

thread death
Under Pressure, collection of short stories by Bosnian writer Faruk Šehić - Until the outbreak of war in 1992, he studied veterinary medicine in Zagreb. However, the then 22-year-old voluntarily joined the army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which he led a unit of 130 men.

Anne Serre’s The Governesses - an uncanny and unsettling story about three governesses who look after some boys in a gated chateau in an unnamed and dreamlike place

I am half way through reading all of Penelope Fitzgerald's novels - each one a slice of perfection - The Beginning of Spring is a great story of Russia just before the revolution takes hold.

Animalia - Jean-Baptiste Del Amo - like one of those John Berger 'pastoral' novels (Pig Earth, for example) - its focus is on the life of a farm and and its inhabitants over a century - grim and pitiless and miserable.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Anne Serre’s The Governesses - an uncanny and unsettling story about three governesses who look after some boys in a gated chateau in an unnamed and dreamlike place
Impossible not to think of Turn of The Screw
 

jenks

thread death
Impossible not to think of Turn of The Screw

Yeah but weirder and french. The first few paragraphs of this do a good job of conveying its very odd approach - it keeps you on your toes and it's very short but exceptionally condensed. Les fugitives, the publisher, have been knocking out very high quality french stuff in translation for a few years - the last one i read was Now Now Louison which was the fictionalised monologue of Louis Bourgeoise - a high wire act that was pulled off very well indeed.
 
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