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maria_1605's review
5.0
[Fragment I]
Da, aș putea să afirm că
discuția noastră a lăsat în urmă
un vid imposibil de umplut. De atunci,
fiecare zi conține acest vid.
Necesitatea formulării,
de a spune ce e acel lucru care
mă însoțește zi de zi. De când nu
ne-am văzut, aducerea aminte
a înlocuit discuțiile noastre.
De atunci nu există zi
care să nu conțină ceva
și inversul e valabil. În ultimul timp
îmi interpretez și tăcerile.
Și simt că sunt zile
care se lărgesc. Fiecare
clipă o adâncime crescândă care
le ascunde în ea însăși. Totul
este cuprins în altceva
care-l ia apoi în stăpânire. Un cuvânt
pe un altul. Iar cuvântul e stăpânit
de o noțiune. Ceea ce am numit vid
e de asemenea parte din ceva. Poate
din discuția noastră care continuă
încă într-un fel sau altul. Cred.
superb volum.
Da, aș putea să afirm că
discuția noastră a lăsat în urmă
un vid imposibil de umplut. De atunci,
fiecare zi conține acest vid.
Necesitatea formulării,
de a spune ce e acel lucru care
mă însoțește zi de zi. De când nu
ne-am văzut, aducerea aminte
a înlocuit discuțiile noastre.
De atunci nu există zi
care să nu conțină ceva
și inversul e valabil. În ultimul timp
îmi interpretez și tăcerile.
Și simt că sunt zile
care se lărgesc. Fiecare
clipă o adâncime crescândă care
le ascunde în ea însăși. Totul
este cuprins în altceva
care-l ia apoi în stăpânire. Un cuvânt
pe un altul. Iar cuvântul e stăpânit
de o noțiune. Ceea ce am numit vid
e de asemenea parte din ceva. Poate
din discuția noastră care continuă
încă într-un fel sau altul. Cred.
superb volum.
potkanna's review
5.0
When I came to Budapest I no longer wanted to live...
This was probably the longest time I've ever spent with a book of poetry, read it once, then once again, always coming back to it, always carrying it with me wherever I went, always reading at least a few lines.
Sitting on the Szabadság híd or waiting for the tram, while watching the Danube or the rose garden of Margit sziget. It kept haunting me. If I didn't bring the book with me every time I left the house I would feel uneasy and distressed. Even now when I'm writing this I have am urging need to come back to it. To try to remember everything Szilárd composed as if forgetting meant certain damnation.
Is it that good? I don't know since I can no longer bear the agressivness of poetry, and I do not wish my deeds to be investigated.
This was probably the longest time I've ever spent with a book of poetry, read it once, then once again, always coming back to it, always carrying it with me wherever I went, always reading at least a few lines.
Sitting on the Szabadság híd or waiting for the tram, while watching the Danube or the rose garden of Margit sziget. It kept haunting me. If I didn't bring the book with me every time I left the house I would feel uneasy and distressed. Even now when I'm writing this I have am urging need to come back to it. To try to remember everything Szilárd composed as if forgetting meant certain damnation.
Is it that good? I don't know since I can no longer bear the agressivness of poetry, and I do not wish my deeds to be investigated.
aoutrance's review
3.0
3.5 stars, truly.
I do not believe I have enough background in poetry to adequately rate this collection, unfamiliar as I am in the history and of how it is created. I'm gonna do it anyway.
Research into this author has told me that he was one of the most important contemporary poets in the post-1989 Eastern European world, where much of his focus was on grief, memory and trauma. It's why I chose this collection to fulfill what I thought would be the most difficult challenge of 2017: "Read a collection of poetry in translation on a theme other than love."
The choppy breakdown of the lines is jarring, but once you get a rhythm going in your head they have their own flow. I suppose this is probably a concept habitual poetry readers just know, but for me it made for a difficult start. Borbély seems to reference other authors (Kafka, Walter Benjamin, etc.) as well as classical mythology quite often, which turned this more into an academic exercise rather than something that was strictly reading for pleasure. Still, I never turn down learning new things and now I am very Hip to history of the flâneur; that is, to stroll and observe as a modern urban spectator.
This is a ghostly, and occasionally ghastly, work that is interspersed with Letters I-XIII that speak searchingly of one penpal desperate to meet up with the his friend, to create a greater intimacy between them. It becomes obvious by Letter IX that she is entirely uninterested:
Some of my favorite pieces from this collection, in no particular order and for no reason that I can put into words:
"Fragment I"
Yes, I could express it simply by saying
that our conversation left in me
a vacant space. Since then, every
day contains this space.
"Schöneweide"
[iii]
He was
a mangy, lost soul. I pitied him. And I thought of my
relatives,
the ones whom I could never meet. Who'
hovered for a while above the German-Polish lowlands, as
dust and ashes. Perhaps that is why I wanted to look,
simply
to observe, for months on end, what the sky was like over
Berlin.
"Letter IV"
And after
I got your address, I was still unsure, was it the right one?
For there is nothing sadder than sending a letter
to an uncertain address. For that is no longer a letter,
but instead a sigh.
My favorite in its entirety is "Naturhistorisches Museum", one of the longer pieces in Berlin-Hamlet. It's an odd blend of skepticism of science, of faith and humanity.
"In the Natural History Museum, from ten until six,
the past is an open book. The domain of minerals and
stones
is seemingly without motion. In a series of
rooms, animals stuffed and preserved
in compliance with the inferred order
of creation. Desiccated bodies, dehydrated plumes,
down, hides. Glass eyes, lifelike.
Movement slowed down to infinity, fixed
but dead creations. Although their legs
are in the air, heads daintily averted.
If seen from the front, the half-profile is preferred.
Representatives of the great species, blind objects
in the darkness. But after closing time, life
doesn't stop. In the ancient oak casements of the vitrines,
tiny parasites continue their labour with
that indifferent monotonous background noise,
as the narrator of a nature film
speaks. Microscopic fungi,
various life-forms of simple constitution
battle for survival. Then the fine tension
of the dramatic tremulo penetrating the
mechanical voice: And the viruses in the air.
When, in the year sixteen hundred and seventy-nine,
after the last occurrence of the Black Death, a memorial
was erected to the devastation, new explanations
were sought. In addition to belief
in providence, there was faith in mathematics,
then statistics. When belief was thrust aside,
the mythology of freedom replaced the cult
of the death. The result was the rapturous
veneration of life, then of course
wars, revolutions. But the watchword
of bliss displaced all else. In time
evolution became the modern metaphor
of death. And all the while humanity
still knew nothing of bacteria.
In front of the display of the great carnivores a quiet
child next to his mother steps back and takes
her hand. And points to one of the creatures: it looks
like daddy. And truly, one could arrange the material
according to the sequence of likenesses.
Through the associative and metaphorical correlations
in a language that knows no history.
On the glass of vitrines the bacteria flourish, but then
comes the great cleansing, fine de capo. A meteor
striking the earth, or a straight of virus now
dormant in the Amazon. Supposedly the beginning of life
was an infection that arrived on a meteorite."
I do not believe I have enough background in poetry to adequately rate this collection, unfamiliar as I am in the history and of how it is created. I'm gonna do it anyway.
Research into this author has told me that he was one of the most important contemporary poets in the post-1989 Eastern European world, where much of his focus was on grief, memory and trauma. It's why I chose this collection to fulfill what I thought would be the most difficult challenge of 2017: "Read a collection of poetry in translation on a theme other than love."
The choppy breakdown of the lines is jarring, but once you get a rhythm going in your head they have their own flow. I suppose this is probably a concept habitual poetry readers just know, but for me it made for a difficult start. Borbély seems to reference other authors (Kafka, Walter Benjamin, etc.) as well as classical mythology quite often, which turned this more into an academic exercise rather than something that was strictly reading for pleasure. Still, I never turn down learning new things and now I am very Hip to history of the flâneur; that is, to stroll and observe as a modern urban spectator.
This is a ghostly, and occasionally ghastly, work that is interspersed with Letters I-XIII that speak searchingly of one penpal desperate to meet up with the his friend, to create a greater intimacy between them. It becomes obvious by Letter IX that she is entirely uninterested:
"She would never marry anyoneOuch, dude. Further terrible things happen to this letter writer, as seems to be a theme of this work; it is stuffed to the brim with ennui and harsh emotional Feelings with a capital F. Upon reading the translation notes, I find it unsurprising that the Letter cycle is based directly of Franz Kafka's missives to his on-again, off-again fiancee, Felice Bauer. The tone of emotional suffocation was there.
else, she said.
She would never throw away my letters. She would not
ask for her photographs back.
She was willing to correspond with me, but wouldn't mind
if she didn't have to any more."
Some of my favorite pieces from this collection, in no particular order and for no reason that I can put into words:
"Fragment I"
Yes, I could express it simply by saying
that our conversation left in me
a vacant space. Since then, every
day contains this space.
"Schöneweide"
[iii]
He was
a mangy, lost soul. I pitied him. And I thought of my
relatives,
the ones whom I could never meet. Who'
hovered for a while above the German-Polish lowlands, as
dust and ashes. Perhaps that is why I wanted to look,
simply
to observe, for months on end, what the sky was like over
Berlin.
"Letter IV"
And after
I got your address, I was still unsure, was it the right one?
For there is nothing sadder than sending a letter
to an uncertain address. For that is no longer a letter,
but instead a sigh.
My favorite in its entirety is "Naturhistorisches Museum", one of the longer pieces in Berlin-Hamlet. It's an odd blend of skepticism of science, of faith and humanity.
"In the Natural History Museum, from ten until six,
the past is an open book. The domain of minerals and
stones
is seemingly without motion. In a series of
rooms, animals stuffed and preserved
in compliance with the inferred order
of creation. Desiccated bodies, dehydrated plumes,
down, hides. Glass eyes, lifelike.
Movement slowed down to infinity, fixed
but dead creations. Although their legs
are in the air, heads daintily averted.
If seen from the front, the half-profile is preferred.
Representatives of the great species, blind objects
in the darkness. But after closing time, life
doesn't stop. In the ancient oak casements of the vitrines,
tiny parasites continue their labour with
that indifferent monotonous background noise,
as the narrator of a nature film
speaks. Microscopic fungi,
various life-forms of simple constitution
battle for survival. Then the fine tension
of the dramatic tremulo penetrating the
mechanical voice: And the viruses in the air.
When, in the year sixteen hundred and seventy-nine,
after the last occurrence of the Black Death, a memorial
was erected to the devastation, new explanations
were sought. In addition to belief
in providence, there was faith in mathematics,
then statistics. When belief was thrust aside,
the mythology of freedom replaced the cult
of the death. The result was the rapturous
veneration of life, then of course
wars, revolutions. But the watchword
of bliss displaced all else. In time
evolution became the modern metaphor
of death. And all the while humanity
still knew nothing of bacteria.
In front of the display of the great carnivores a quiet
child next to his mother steps back and takes
her hand. And points to one of the creatures: it looks
like daddy. And truly, one could arrange the material
according to the sequence of likenesses.
Through the associative and metaphorical correlations
in a language that knows no history.
On the glass of vitrines the bacteria flourish, but then
comes the great cleansing, fine de capo. A meteor
striking the earth, or a straight of virus now
dormant in the Amazon. Supposedly the beginning of life
was an infection that arrived on a meteorite."
More...