2011年11月29日 星期二

Charles Bernstein 詩選等

查爾斯•伯恩斯坦詩選 [平裝]
~ 聶珍釗 (作者), 羅良功 (作者)

Charles Bernstein 詩選
出版社: 華中師範大學出版社; 第1版(2011年9月1日)
外文書名: Selected Poems of Charles Bernstein
平裝: 213頁
正文語種: 簡體中文

charles bernstein 伯恩斯坦詩選

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查理斯·伯恩斯坦,美國賓夕法尼亞大學教授、美國藝術與科學院院士、中美詩歌詩學協會副會長,是美國“語言派”詩歌的代表人物和理論家。出版文集、詩集、 劇本等40餘部,重要著作有《困難詩的攻擊》、《姑娘似的男人》、《現實國》等。《查理斯·伯恩斯坦詩選》是他的一部作品集。本書由聶珍刊、羅良功編譯。

目錄


責任感
帕盧卡維爾
污點
突起
政策那些事兒
白描
光陰模片
分解代謝
評論家的椅子
在讀數儀錶旁
幾維樹上的幾維鳥
論詩學:為英屬哥倫比亞溫哥華寫作學校新詩研討會而作,1985年8月
糟糕透頂的練習曲
島嶼/搗鼓
舉起犁刀
運動症
一個問題
瘋人院
收費員的生命
虛擬現實
普通人情感
黑暗之城
半敞著車門玻璃
逃命的絕望
選戰後
中國全是茶
革命詩
想著我在想我在想
鼠面人群的騙局
如此
消極經驗的製造
人的概要
詩:為傑克遜·馬克洛而作
小孤兒拼字圖
物質必定流過歲月的孔隙
航海日誌節奏
人間眾生相
泥瓦匠的手臂
比如說吧

有湖就有屋
附錄1
附錄2
後記






From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Language poets (or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, after the magazine that bears that name) are an avant garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In developing their poetics, members of the Language school took as their starting point the emphasis on method evident in the modernist tradition, particularly as represented by Gertrude Stein and Louis Zukofsky. Language poetry is also an example of poetic postmodernism. Its immediate postmodern precursors were the New American poets, a rubric which includes the New York School, the Objectivist poets, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance.

While there is no such thing as a "typical" Language poem, certain aspects of the writing of language poets became heavily identified with this group: writing that actively challenged the "natural" presence of a speaker behind the text; writing that emphasized disjunction and the materiality of the signifier; and prose poetry, especially in longer forms than had previously been favored by English language writers, and other nontraditional and usually nonnarrative forms.

Language poetry has been a controversial topic in American letters from the 1970s to the present. Even the name itself has been controversial: while a number of poets and critics have used the name of the journal to refer to the group, many others have chosen to use the term, when they used it at all, without the equals signs, while "language writing" and "language-centered writing" are also commonly used, and perhaps the most generic terms. None of the poets associated with the tendency have used the equal signs when referring to the writing collectively, and its appearance in some critical articles can be read as an index of the author's outsider status.[1]

Online writing samples of many language poets can be found on internet sites, including blogs and sites maintained by authors and through gateways such as the Electronic Poetry Center, PennSound, and UbuWeb.

Contents

[hide]

[edit] History of language poetry

[edit] Early history of language poetry

There is more than one origin of this highly decentered movement. On the West Coast, an early seed of language poetry was the launch of This magazine, edited by Robert Grenier and Watten, in 1971. Coming out of New York, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, edited by Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein, ran from 1978 to 1982, and featured poetics, forums on writers in the movement, and themes such as "The Politics of Poetry" and "Reading Stein." Equally significant for the understanding of this movement of divergent, though interconnected, poetry practices that emerged in the 1970s was Ron Silliman's poetry newsletter Tottel's (1970–81),[2] and Bruce Andrews's selection in a special issue of Toopick (1973), as well as Lyn Hejinian's editing of Tuumba Press and James Sherry's editing of ROOF magazine. The first significant collection of language-centered poetics was "The Politics of the Referent," edited by Steve McCaffery for the Toronto-based publication, Open Letter (1977).

In an essay from the first issue of This, Grenier declared: "I HATE SPEECH". Grenier's ironic statement (itself a speech act), was, in the context of the essay in which it occurred, along with a questioning attitude to the referentiality of language evidenced even in the magazine's title, later claimed by Ron Silliman, in the introduction to his anthology In the American Tree, as an epochal moment—a rallying cry for a number of young U.S. poets who were increasingly dissatisfied with the poetry of the Black Mountain poets and Beat poets.

"I HATE SPEECH" — Robert Grenier

"Thus capitalized, these words in an essay entitled "On Speech," the second of five short critical pieces by Robert Grenier in the first issue of This, the magazine he cofounded with Barrett Watten in winter, 1971, announced a breach - and a new moment in American writing.
Ron Silliman[3]

However, it was equally the range of contemporary poetries that focused on "language" in This, Tottel's, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, and also in several other key publications and essays of the time, rather than a single declarative sentence, that established the field of discussion that would emerge as Language (or L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E) poetry.

Indeed, during the 1970s, a number of magazines emerged who published poets who would become associated with the Language movement. Some other literary magazines associated with the movement in the 1970s and 1980s included A Hundred Posters (edited by Alan Davies), Big Deal, Dog City, Hills, Là Bas, MIAM, Oculist Witnesses, QU, and Roof. Poetics Journal, which published writings in poetics and was edited by Lyn Hejinian and Barrett Watten, appeared from 1982 to 1998. Significant early gatherings of Language writing included Silliman's selection "The Dwelling Place: 9 Poets" in Alcheringa, (1975) Bruce Andrews's selection in Toopick, (1973) and Charles Bernstein's "A Language Sampler" in The Paris Review(1982)

Aside from magazines and presses, a number of poetry reading series, especially in New York, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco, were important venues for the performance of this new poetry and for the development of dialogue and collaboration among poets. Generally considered most important were the Ear Inn reading series in New York, founded in 1978 by Ted Greenwald and Charles Bernstein and later organized through James Sherry's Segue Foundation and curated by Mitch Highfill, Jeanne Lance, Andrew Levy, Rob Fitterman, Laynie Brown, Alan Davies, and others; Folio Books in Washington, D.C., founded by Doug Lang; and the Grand Piano reading series in San Francisco, which was curated by Barrett Watten, Ron Silliman, Tom Mandel, Rae Armantrout, Ted Pearson, Carla Harryman, and Steve Benson at various times.

Poets, some of whom have been mentioned above, who were associated with the first wave of Language poetry include: Rae Armantrout, Steve Benson, Abigail Child, Clark Coolidge, Tina Darragh, Alan Davies, Carla Harryman, P. Inman, Lynne Dryer, Madeline Gins, Michael Gottlieb, Fanny Howe, Susan Howe, Jackson Mac Low (1922—2004), Tom Mandel, Bernadette Mayer, Steve McCaffery, Michael Palmer, Ted Pearson, Bob Perelman, Nick Piombino, Peter Seaton (1942—2010), Joan Retallack, Erica Hunt, James Sherry, Jean Day, Kit Robinson, Ted Greenwald, Leslie Scalapino (1944—2010), Diane Ward, Rosmarie Waldrop, and Hannah Weiner (1928—1997). This list accurately reflects the high proportion of female poets across the spectrum of the Language writing movement.[4] African-American poets associated with the movement include Hunt, Nathaniel Mackey, and Harryette Mullen.

[edit] Poetics of language writing: theory and practice

Language poetry emphasizes the reader's role in bringing meaning out of a work and came about, at least in part, in response to the sometimes uncritical use of expressive lyric sentiment among earlier poetry movements to which the Language poets felt a kinship. In the 1950s and '60s certain groups of poets had followed William Carlos Williams in his use of idiomatic American English rather than what they considered the 'heightened,' or overtly poetic language favored by the New Criticism movement. In particular New York School poets like Frank O'Hara and The Black Mountain group emphasized both speech and everyday language in their poetry and poetics. In contrast, some of the Language poets emphasized metonymy, synecdoche and extreme instances of paratactical structures in their compositions, which, even when employing everyday speech, created a far different texture. The result is often alien and difficult to understand at first glance, which is what Language poetry intends: for the reader to participate in creating the meaning of the poem.[5]

With reference to earlier poetry movements, it would be important to note that both Watten's & Grenier's magazine This (and This Press that Watten edited) along with the magazine L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, published work by notable Black Mountain poets such as Robert Creeley and Larry Eigner. Silliman considers Language poetry to be a continuation (albeit incorporating a critique) of the earlier movements.[6] Watten has emphasized the discontinuity between the New American poets, whose writing, he argues, privileged self-expression however mediated through language, and the Language poets, who tend to downplay expression and see the poem as a construction in and of language itself. In contrast, Bernstein has emphasized the expressive possibilities of working with constructed, and even found, language.

Gertrude Stein, particularly in her writing after Tender Buttons, and Louis Zukofsky, in his book-length poem "A," are the modernist poets most influential on the Language school. In the postwar period, John Cage, Jackson Mac Low, and poets of the New York School (John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Ted Berrigan) and Black Mountain School (Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, and Robert Duncan) are most recognizable as precursors to the Language poets. Many of these poets used procedural methods based on mathematical sequences and other logical organising devices to structure their poetry, and this practice proved highly useful to the language group. The application of process, especially at the level of the sentence, was to become the basic tenet of language praxis. The influence of Stein came from the fact that she was a writer who had frequently used language divorced from reference in her own writings. The language poets also drew on the philosophical works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, especially the concepts of language-games, meaning as use, and family resemblance among different uses being the solution to the Problem of universals.

[edit] Language poetry in the early 21st century

In many ways, what Language poetry is is still being determined. Most of the poets whose work falls within the bounds of the Language school are still alive and still active contributors. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Language poetry was widely received as a significant movement in innovative poetry in the U.S., a trend accentuated by the fact that some of its leading proponents took up academic posts in the Poetics, Creative Writing and English Literature departments in prominent universities (University of Pennsylvania, SUNY Buffalo, Wayne State University, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, San Diego, University of Maine, the Iowa Writers' Workshop).

Language poetry also developed affiliations with literary scenes outside the States, notably England, Canada (through the Kootenay school of writing in Vancouver), France, the USSR, Brazil, Finland, Sweden, New Zealand, and Australia. It had a particularly interesting relation to the UK avant-garde: in the 1970s and 1980s there were extensive contacts between American language poets and veteran UK writers like Tom Raworth and Allen Fisher, or younger figures such as Caroline Bergvall, Maggie O'Sullivan, cris cheek, and Ken Edwards (whose magazine Reality Studios was instrumental in the transatlantic dialogue between American and UK avant-gardes). Other writers, such as J.H. Prynne and those associated with the so-called "Cambridge" poetry scene (Rod Mengham, Douglas Oliver, Peter Riley) were perhaps more skeptical about language poetry and its associated polemics and theoretical documents, though Geoff Ward wrote a book about the phenomena.

A second-generation of poets influenced by the Language poets includes Eric Selland (also a noted translator of modern Japanese poetry), Lisa Robertson, Juliana Spahr, the Kootenay School poets, Conceptual Writing, Flarf collectives, and many others.

A significant number of women poets, and magazines and anthologies of innovative women's poetry, have been associated with language poetry on both sides of the Atlantic. They also represent an often distinct set of concerns. Among the poets are Leslie Scalapino, Madeline Gins, Susan Howe, Lyn Hejinian, Carla Harryman, Rae Armantrout, Johanna Drucker, Abigail Child, Karen Mac Cormack; among the magazines HOW/ever, later the e-based journal HOW2; and among the anthologies Out of Everywhere: Linguistically Innovative Poetry by Women in North America & the UK, edited by Maggie O'Sullivan for Reality Street Editions in London (1996) and Mary Margaret Sloan's Moving Borders: Three Decades of Innovative Writing by Women (Jersey City: Talisman Publishers, 1998).

The Grand Piano [7] describes itself as "an experiment in collective autobiography". It was begun over email by ten poets, each of whom was at one time involved with running the reading series at the Haight Street, San Francisco, coffee house by that name, who sought to reconnect their writing practices and to "recall and contextualize events from the period of the late 1970s." When completed, The Grand Piano, will comprise ten parts, in each of which the ten authors appear in a different sequence, often responding to prompts and problems arising in the series.

Some poets, such as Norman Finkelstein, have stressed their own ambiguous relationship even after decades of fruitful engagement to "Language poetry". Finkelstein, in a discussion with Mark Scroggins in which they discuss The Grand Piano, points to a "risk" (if foregrounded) when previously marginalized poets attempt to write their own literary histories, "not the least of which is a self-regard bordering on narcissism".[8]

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ Discussions of the politics of the name and nature of the movement may be found in Michael Greer's article, "Ideology and Theory in Recent Experimental Writing or, the Naming of 'Language Poetry,'" boundary 2, Vol. 16, No. 2/3 (Winter - Spring, 1989), pp. 335-355; and in Bob Perelman, The Marginalization of Poetry, Lyn Hejinian, The Language of Inquiry, Barrett Watten, The Constructivist Moment, Ron Silliman, The New Sentence, and Charles Bernstein, My Way: Speeches and Poems.
  2. ^ available on-line at the Eclipse archive, link here: Tottel's Magazine
  3. ^ "Introduction: Language, Realism, Poetry" from In The American Tree (See below "Further reading: Anthologies")
  4. ^ Ann Vickery (2000), Leaving Lines of Gender: A Feminist Genealogy of Language Writing, Wesleyan University Press
  5. ^ See, for example, Ronald Johnson's RADI OS in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, volume 1.
  6. ^ For an extended poetic meditation on form by Sillman, see the poem Wild Form
  7. ^ for additional details, commentary, and links see Barrett Watten's piece How The Grand Piano Is Being Written and James Sherry's commentaries in Jacket The Ten-Tone Scale
  8. ^ "The Toy Piano" a piece from Mark Scroggins's blog Culture Industry, with commentary by Norman Finkelstein

[edit] Further reading

[edit] Anthologies

  • Andrews, Bruce, and Charles Bernstein, eds. The "L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E" Book. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984.
  • Armantrout, Rae. Collected Prose. San Diego: Singing Horse, 2007.
  • Bernstein, Charles, ed. The Politics of Poetic Form: Poetry and Public Policy. New York: Roof, 1990.
  • Messerli, Douglas, ed. Language Poetries. New York: New Directions, 1987.
  • Silliman, Ron, ed. In the American Tree. Orono, Me.: National Poetry Foundation, 1986; reprint ed. with a new afterword, 2002. An anthology of language poetry that serves as a very useful primer.

[edit] Books: Poetics and Criticism

  • Huff, Jason. [1] "AutoSummarize." Lulu Press, 2010.
  • Andrews, Bruce. Paradise and Method. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996.
  • Bernstein, Charles. Content's Dream: Essays 1975-1984. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1985
    • A Poetics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992
    • My Way; Speeches and Poems. University of Chicago Press, 1999
    • Attack of the Difficult Poems: Essays and Inventions. University of Chicago Press, 2011
  • Davies, Alan. Signage. New York: Roof Books, 1987.
  • Friedlander, Ben. Simulcast: Four Experiments in Criticism. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004.
  • Hartley, George. Textual Politics and the Language Poets. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.
  • Hejinian, Lyn. The Language of Inquiry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
  • Howe, Susan. My Emily Dickinson. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1988. Rpt, New Directions, 2007.
    • The Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1993.
  • Huk, Romana, ed. Assembling Alternatives: Reading Postmodern Poetries Transnationally. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2003.
  • McCaffery, Steve. North of Intention: Critical Writings 1973-1986. New York: Roof Books, 1986.
    • Prior to Meaning: The Protosemantic and Poetics. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 2001.
  • Perelman, Bob. The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996.
  • Piombino, Nick. Boundary of Blur. New York: Roof Books, 1993
    • Theoretical Objects. Green Integer Press, 1999.
  • Ratcliffe, Stephen. Listening to Reading. Abany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000
  • Reinfeld, Linda. Language Poetry: Writing as Rescue. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1992.
  • Silliman, Ron. The New Sentence. New York: Roof Books, 1987. An early collection of talks and essays that situates language poetry into contemporary political thought, linguistics, and literary tradition. See esp. section II.
  • Scalapino, Leslie. How Phenomena Appear to Unfold. Elmwood: Potes & Poets, 1989.
    • Objects in the Terrifying Tense / Longing from Taking Place. Roof Books, 1994.
    • The Public World / Syntactically Impermanence. Wesleyan University Press, 1999.
    • How Phenomena Appear to Unfold. Litmus Press, 2011.
  • Seaton, Peter. Crisis Intervention. Berkeley, California: Tuumba Press, 1983.
    • The Son Master. New York: Roof Books, 1982.
    • Agreement. New York: Asylum's Press, 1978
  • Vickery, Ann. Leaving Lines of Gender: A Feminist Genealogy of Language Writing. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2000.
  • Ward, Geoff. Language Poetry and the American Avant-Garde. Keele: British Association for American Studies, 1993.
  • Watten, Barrett. The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2003. See esp. chaps. 2 and 3.
    • Total Syntax. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984.

[edit] Books: Cross-genre & Cultural writing

  • Davies, Alan. Candor. Berkeley, CA, 1990.
  • Perelman, Bob, et al.. The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography. Detroit, MI: Mode A/This Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-9790198-0-X - this work is described as an ongoing experiment in collective autobiography by ten writers[1] identified with Language poetry in San Francisco. The project will consist of 10 volumes in all.
  • Piombino, Nick. Fait Accompli. Queens, NY: Factory School, 2006.
  • Scalapino, Leslie. Zither & Autobiography. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan, 2003.

[edit] Articles

  • Michael Greer, "Ideology and Theory in Recent Experimental Writing or, the Naming of "Language Poetry," boundary 2, Vol. 16, No. 2/3 (Winter - Spring, 1989), pp. 335–355
  • Perloff, Marjorie. "The Word as Such: LANGUAGE: Poetry in the Eighties." American Poetry Review (May–June 1984), 13(3):15-22.[2]
  • Bartlett, Lee, "What is 'Language Poetry'?" Critical Inquiry 12 (1986): 741-752. Available through JStor.
  1. ^ The ten writers are Bob Perelman, Barrett Watten, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Tom Mandel, Ron Silliman, Kit Robinson, Lyn Hejinian, Rae Armantrout, and Ted Pearson. This book further describes itself as follows: "It takes its name from a coffeehouse at 1607 Haight Street, where from 1976-79 the authors took part in a reading and performance series. The writing project, begun in 1998, was undertaken as an online collaboration, first via an interactive web site and later through a listserv"
  2. ^ this article on line link here

[edit] External links

Devil's Dictionary

http://www.alcyone.com/max/lit/devils/m.html
佈文章
The Devil's Dictionary 台灣的版本似乎從日譯本
http://www005.upp.so-net.ne.jp/kareha/trans/dd_r.htm


轉譯
錯誤相當多
當時有許多深的拉丁文等
日本人也弄錯
MENDACIOUS, adj.
Addicted to rhetoric.
adj.
  1. Lying; untruthful: a mendacious child.
  2. False; untrue: a mendacious statement. See synonyms at dishonest.

[From Latin mendācium, lie, from mendāx, mendāc-, mendacious.]


MIND, n.
A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavor to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with. From the Latin mens, a fact unknown to that honest shoe-seller, who, observing that his learned competitor over the way had displayed the motto "Mens conscia recti," emblazoned his own front with the words "Men's, women's and children's conscia recti."



mendaciously men·da'cious·ly adv.

The Enlarged Devil’s Dictionary, Penguin, 1968.



Devil's Dictionary

Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce
Satirical, cynical, quirky and tongue-in-cheek definitions by a 19th-century writer. Wise and witty, but not meant to be taken seriously!
On this page: labor to lyre.

Search inside for:
Title Index: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z



Vale of tears, leg out, Devil's Dictionary: legacy

The so-called legacy airline carriers — such as Delta Air Lines, British Airways, and Air France — should be well positioned to take advantage of globalization, but due to strict regulations, globalization is not an opportunity, but a grave threat. To compete with low-cost carriers and rising stars in developing regions, legacy carriers must share costs and services with their global partners, build operating models that can support their vision, and prepare for the potential of a more globalized market.



legacy

n., pl.,
-cies.
  1. Money or property bequeathed to another by will.
  2. Something handed down from an ancestor or a predecessor or from the past: a legacy of religious freedom. See synonyms at heritage.

[Middle English legacie, office of a deputy, from Old French, from Medieval Latin lēgātia, from Latin lēgātus, past participle of lēgāre, to depute, bequeath.]




Devil's Dictionary:

legacy


A cynical view of the world by Ambrose Bierce


n.

A gift from one who is legging it out of this vale of tears.



leg

intr.v. Informal,
legged, leg·ging, legs.
To go on foot; walk or run. Often used with the indefinite it: Because we missed the bus, we had to leg it across town.



Vale of tears is a phrase based upon the Christian religion that refers to Earthly sorrows that are to be left behind when one enters heaven. "Vale" means a valley or a dale. The phrase comes from the Latin in Psalm 84:6 in the Vulgate Bible: "in valle lacrimarum ..." (in the vale of tears ...). It implies that the wickedness of the world makes it dark and reprieve comes only from divine salvation.




Life Redefined: "The Devil's Dictionary" Turns 100


Abierce_1866

A century after its publication as The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce’s comic lexicon remains a beautifully nasty piece of work. Though it’s a work of satire first and foremost, its mock definitions incorporate whimsy, existential pessimism, cheap puns, sex jokes, and just about every other trick in the comedian’s book. Here’s a quick sampling of my favorite entries:

SELF-ESTEEM, n. An erroneous appraisement.

SELFISH, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.

OBSOLETE, adj. No longer used by the timid. Said chiefly of words.

LIFE, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed. The question, "Is life worth living?" has been much discussed; particularly by those who think it is not, many of whom have written at great length in support of their view, and by careful observance of the laws of health enjoyed for long terms of years the honors of successful controversy.

HASH, x. There is no definition for this word—nobody knows what hash is.

Like hash, Bierce himself was defiantly uncategorizable. His career is one of the oddities of American literature; after the Dictionary, his second best-known work is the eerie short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” which has inspired multiple film and TV adaptations. (Probably the most famous of these aired in the '60s as an episode of The Twilight Zone.) Along with his sister in cynicism, Dorothy Parker, he is quoted constantly, but few writers claim him as an influence. Exceptions include Kurt Vonnegut, who greatly admired “Owl Creek”—“I consider anyone a Twerp who hasn’t read [it]”—and the Australian writer Peter Bowler, whose Superior Person’s Book of Words series I’ve loved since childhood.

Bierce fought, and suffered injuries, in the gruesome Battle of Shiloh, an experience that some believe formed the nihilistic core of his comedy. Look into the eyes of the photo above: that is a man who’s seen some things. His influence on Vonnegut, witness to the Dresden massacre, becomes clearer in that light, though Bierce’s work is less tempered with the milk of human kindness.

A reticent man in life, Bierce died as a total enigma: he disappeared in Mexico in 1913 while traveling—at age 71—with Pancho Villa’s army. As a result, he joins a select club of famous authors who have vanished under mysterious circumstances. Others include the poets Hart Crane (drowned at sea, possibly a suicide) and Weldon Kees (probably a suicide; his car was found abandoned by the Golden Gate Bridge after he’d told a friend he was going to Mexico). And then there are Poe and Christopher Marlowe, whose bodies were recovered but whose deaths are shrouded in suspicions of foul play. My personal theory is that all of these men are gathered on an island somewhere in the Twilight Zone, discussing literature and the virtues of terrible mustaches.


***Review: 'The Devil's Dictionary,' by Ambrose Bierce
San Francisco Chronicle
who emerged as a writer in San Francisco right after the Civil War, is remembered best today for his clever "Devil's Dictionary." As this anthology demonstrates, however, he was skilled at multiple writing genres - fact, fiction and in between, ...



Dreams /『天気待ち 監督・黒澤明とともに』

2011/11/29 在HBO重看黒澤明的夢 以前看過 現在福島災民出走已6萬多人\


/( Yume?, aka Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, I Saw a Dream Like This, or Such Dreams I Have Dreamed) is a 1990 magical realism film based on actual dreams of the film's director, Akira Kurosawa at different stages of his life. The film is more imagery than dialogue. The alternative titles ("I Saw a Dream Like This") are a translation of the opening line of Ten Nights of Dreams, by Natsume Sōseki, which begins: Konna yume wo mita (こんな夢を見た?). The film was screened out of competition at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.[1]

Contents

Dreams

The film consists of several dreams based on Kurosawa's own, throughout his life. The dreams are eight separate segments in the following order:

Sunshine Through The Rain

There is an old legend in Japan that states that when the sun is shining through the rain, the kitsune (foxes) have their weddings (this is a common theme globally – see sunshower). In this first dream, a boy defies the wish of a woman, possibly his mother, to remain at home during a day with such weather. From behind a large tree in the nearby forest, he witnesses the slow wedding procession of the kitsune. Unfortunately, he is spotted by the foxes and runs. When he tries to return home, the same woman says that a fox had come by the house, leaving behind a tantō knife. The woman gives the knife to the boy, implying that he must commit suicide. The woman asks the boy to go and beg forgiveness from the foxes, although they are known to be unforgiving, refusing to let him in unless he does so. The boy sets off into the mountains, towards the place under the rainbow in search for the kitsune's home.

The Peach Orchard

Hina Matsuri, the Doll Festival, traditionally takes place in spring when the peach blossoms are in full bloom. The dolls that go on display at this time, they say, are representative of the peach trees and their pink blossoms. One boy's family, however, has chopped down their peach orchard, so the boy feels a sense of loss during this year's festival. After being scolded by his older sister the boy spots a small girl running out the front door. He follows her to the now-treeless orchard, where the dolls from his sister's collection have come to life and are standing before him on the slopes of the orchard. The living dolls, revealing themselves to be the spirits of the peach trees, berate the boy about chopping down the precious trees. But after realizing how much he loved the blossoms, they agree to give him one last glance at the peach trees by way of a slow and beautiful dance to Etenraku. After they disappear the boy finds the small girl walking among the treeless orchard before seeing a single peach tree sprouting in her place.

The Blizzard

A group of four mountaineers struggle up a mountain path during a horrendous blizzard. It has been snowing for three days and the men are dispirited and ready to give up. One by one they stop walking, giving in to the snow and sure death. The leader endeavors to push on, but he too, stops in the snow. A strange woman (possibly the Yuki-onna of Japanese myth) appears out of nowhere and attempts to lure the last conscious man to his death - give into the snow and the storm, she urges him on, into reverie, into sleep, into certain death. But finding some heart, deep within, he shakes off his stupor and her entreaties, to discover that the storm has abated, and that their camp is only a few feet away.

The Tunnel

A Japanese army officer is traveling down a deserted road at dusk, on his way back home from fighting in the Second World War. He comes to a large concrete pedestrian tunnel that seems to go on forever into the darkness. Suddenly, an angry, almost demonic-looking anti-tank dog (strapped with explosives) runs out of the tunnel and snarls deeply at him. He proceeds with his walk, afraid, into the tunnel. He comes out the other side, but then witnesses something horrific — the yūrei (ghost) of one of the soldiers (Private Noguchi) whom he had charge over in the war comes out of the tunnel behind him, his face a light blue, signifying that he is dead.

The soldier seems not to believe he's dead, but the officer convinces him and the soldier returns into the darkness of the tunnel. Just when he thinks he's seen the worst, the officer sees his entire third platoon marching out of the tunnel. They too are dead, with light blue faces. He tries to convince them that they're dead, and he expresses his deep-seated guilt about letting them all die in the war. They stand mute, in reply to his words. He then orders them to about face, and then march back into the tunnel. Lastly, we see a second appearance of the hellish dog, from the beginning of this dream.

This is one of three "nightmares" featured in the film.

Akira Kurosawa's long time friend Ishirō Honda may have helped to direct, or have directed this piece entirely. The two always spoke of filming a story of a dead soldier returning from war.

Crows

A brilliantly colored vignette featuring director Martin Scorsese as Vincent Van Gogh. An art student (a character wearing Kurosawa's trademark hat who provides the POV for the rest of the film) finds himself inside the vibrant and sometimes chaotic world inside Van Gogh's artwork, where he meets the artist in a field and converses with him. The student loses track of the artist (who is missing an ear and nearing the end of his life) and travels through other works trying to find him. Van Gogh's painting Wheat Field with Crows is an important element in this dream. This Segment features Prelude No. 15 in D-flat major ("Raindrop") by Chopin. The visual effects for this particular segment were provided by George Lucas and his special effects group Industrial Light and Magic.[citation needed]

This is the only segment where the characters do not speak Japanese.

Mount Fuji in Red

The film's second nightmare sequence. A large nuclear power plant near Mount Fuji has begun to melt down, painting the sky a horrendous red and sending the millions of Japanese citizens desperately fleeing into the ocean. Three adults and two children are left behind on land, but they soon realize that the radiation will kill them anyway.

The Weeping Demon

A man (possibly Kurosawa himself) finds himself wandering around a misty, bleak mountainous terrain. He meets a strange oni-like man, who is actually a mutated human with one horn. The "demon" explains that there had been a nuclear holocaust which resulted in the loss of nature and animals, enormous dandelions and humans sprouting horns, which cause them so much agony that you can hear them howling during the night, but, according to the demon, they can't die, which makes their agony even worse. The last of the three "nightmare" sequences. This is actually a post-apocalyptic retelling of a classic Buddhist fable of the same name.

Village of the Watermills

A young man finds himself entering a peaceful, stream-laden village. The traveller meets an old, wise man who is fixing a broken watermill wheel. The elder explains that the people of his village decided long ago to forsake the polluting influence of modern technology and return to a happier, cleaner era of society. They have chosen spiritual health over convenience, and the traveller is surprised but intrigued by this notion.

At the end of the sequence (and the film), a funeral procession for an old woman takes place in the village, which instead of mourning, the people celebrate joyfully as the proper end to a good life. This segment was filmed at the Daio Wasabi farm in the Nagano Prefecture. The film ends with a haunting yet melancholic melody from the excerpts of "In the Village" , part of the Caucasian Sketches, Suite No. 1 by the Russian composer Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov.

Cast

References

  1. ^ "Festival de Cannes: Dreams". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-08-08.

External links

***


2010/2/10
情圖文並茂

『天気待ち 監督・黒澤明とともに』 (文藝春秋、2001年、文春文庫、2004年)

等雲到:與黑澤明導演在一起
http://publish.dbw.cn   2009年12月11日 08:54:37

  又名:天?待監督・?澤明
  作者: (日)野上照代
  譯者:吳菲
  副標題:與黑澤明導演在一起
  ISBN: 9787208087088
  頁數: 276
  定價: 28.00元
  出版社:上海人民出版社
  裝幀:平裝
  出版年: 2010年1月
  簡介· · · · · ·
  《蛤蟆的油》之續本講述《羅生門》之後的黑澤明
  黑澤明導演讓他的自傳《蛤蟆的油》結束於1950年,正是他的電影《羅生門》為全世界認識的那一年。他在自傳中說:『寫自傳的我不能穿過這個門(《羅生門》)再前進了。《羅生門》以後的我,要從《羅生門》之後我作品的人物中去認識。』
  那一年,野上照代第一次遇見黑澤明,並開始了長達半個世紀的合作,被黑澤導演稱為『我的左膀右臂』。她參與了黑澤導演《羅生門》之後幾乎全部作品的拍攝,見證了這個偉大電影人的大起大落,故而本書實為《蛤蟆的油》之續本。通過野上照代的筆,黑澤導演的剛強與淡定,認真與從容,以及『等雲到』的那份堅持,都一一在讀者面前展現。
  野上照代:
  我多麼希望能夠再有一次機會,跟黑澤攝制組一起在外景地一邊等雲到,一邊在火堆旁烤著火聽黑澤先生閑聊,跟大家一起為微不足道的小事開懷大笑。然而,那已是不再復返的幸福時光。
  如果黑澤明先生讀了這本書,他一定會說:『那時的艱辛可不是這麼回事,你還是不明白!』
  作者簡介· · · · · ·
  野上照代(Nogami Teruyo ),1927年生於東京。黑澤制作公司制作經理。1949年進入大映京都攝影所擔任見習場記。1950年,黑澤明導演為拍攝《羅生門》來到京都太秦的京都攝影所,野上照代自此開始為黑澤明導演工作。在與黑澤明導演合作近半個世紀的時間裡,除去在松竹映畫拍攝的《白癡》之外,野上參與了黑澤明導演所有作品的拍攝。此外,她也進行文學創作,1984年小說《致父親的安魂曲》獲得第五屆『人類女性紀錄片獎』優秀獎,並被改編成電影《母親》,於2008年上映。

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