Early Spring

 

In celebration of World Poetry Day 2022

 I first posted the poem below, a translation, to celebrate Barcelona's Poetry Week 2018. The original is Joan Timoneda's "Só qui só, from the version sung by Raimon. As will be obvious it's a love poem/song. It can be found on YouTube among other places. Wikipedia has information about Timoneda (~1518-1583) but as far as I can see only in Catalan and Spanish, although it should be easy enough to get that translated. So Happy Poetry Day---taking poetry in the ample sense of creative activity! The poem and translation:

Só qui só

Só qui só, que no só io,

Puix mudat d’amor me só.

Io crec cert que res no sia,

o, si só, só fantasia,

o algun home que somia

que ve alcançar algun do,

puix mudat d’amor me só.

Só del tot transfigurat;

só aquell que era llibertat,

i ara d’amors cativat

me veig molt fora raó,

puix mudat d’amor me só.

Sí só, puix que en lo món vixc

i a mi mateix avorrixc,

i segons que discernixc

veig la qui em dóna passió

puix d’amor mudat me só.

                                                                                          Joan Timoneda, 1556

My translation (version 1):

I am who I am

I am who I am, I am not I,

for by love changed am I.

I well believe that nothing is,

and, if I am, I’m fantasy,

or some man who dreams

he may attain some gift,

for by love I’m changed.

I am fully transfigured;

I am who was freedom,

and now by loves made captive

I see myself gone mad,

for by love am I changed.

Yet I am, for in the world I do live

And do weary even myself,

and by my discerning

do see her who fires my passion

for by love changed am I.

in the interests of peace....

 .... and with respect for the hard work of diplomacy !

Virginia Woolf and war – an homage to Virginia Woolf and to #BreakTheBias

 

Virginia Woolf and war – an homage to Virginia Woolf and to #breakthebias

The writing of Virginia Woolf was bound to touch on the effects of war. She lived through both the first and second world war as well as the Boer war. As a pacifist, Woolf wrote against war and other violent situations, including, obviously, gender violence. In Mrs Dalloway, as I have written before, there is a basic duality established between Septimus Warren Smith and Clarissa Dalloway that reminds us of the suffering we’re currently seeing in world conflicts, not only in Ukraine. In the novel one protagonist is privileged, a person of means; the other, an ex-soldier who survives World War I, is unemployed, of penurious means. Poet and society matron. Male and female. Simplifying in this way is one way of coming to understandings of the ideas running through the book. And as always in Woolf there is highly careful planning behind the writing. But two other binary opposites, sane/insane, are of use here, especially as Woolf herself made use of them as she planned the book.

 Repetition of some of these words sets the novel to navigate around truth versus insane truth… At the same time the writing establishes doubt—the region of beauty, as Woolf terms it in the essay ‘Reading’—about the acuteness of Septimus Smith’s psychological trauma. Smith, the character, representative of so many people trapped in wars, may or may not be insane. But obviously the insanity of war makes up a great part of the writer’s societal indictment. But underlying the text is a fascinating use of suggestion woven in through the aforementioned series of key words or ideas as the personal perspectives of the book’s characters become clear through their thoughts and conversations. 

Given the world situation today, let us hope we can grow less violent and definitely break the bias!

Conflicts (2)

 

Conflicts (2)

 No, obviously it is far from easy to create in the harsh times we’re living through. The seeming impossibility of diplomatic solutions to the current conflicts in Ukraine, and for that matter of course in other parts of the world are part of the context in which we live and work. As noted in my previous post, I have gone to the work of John Dewey in search of ideas that may provide ways of finding peaceful solutions. So again I quote Dewey in regard to the use of diplomacy:

We have to analyze conditions by observations, which are as discriminating as they are extensive, until we discover specific interactions that are taking place, and learn to think in terms of interactions instead of force. We are led to search even for the conditions which have given the interacting factors the power they possess.

 Additionally, I think we must look at today’s ongoing protests against “Putin’s war” as an “interacting factor” rejecting the misuse of power and force of arms.*

 *The citation is from Dewey’s Freedom and Culture, 1939 (1963).