ITALO CALVINO

Italian Folk Tales.

This is a masterful collection of Italian Folktales, where the reader is lured into a world of flux, of metamorphoses, where kings and peasants, tricksters and saints, and a whole zoology* of extraordinary animals, plants and fish wend their way through the landscape and history of the Italian nation.

Italian Folktales (Fiabe Italiane) is a collection of 200 folktales, collated from various regions around Italy, and from the works of a whole army of collectors, folklorists, ethnologists etc., making use of an extensive collection of work compiled over the centuries. Italo Calvino started this undertaking in 1954 (published 1956), with the intention of emulating The Brothers Grimm, and producing a collection of tales that would be popular amongst the general reading public. Within these pages we follow a nations collective psyche, yield to the joyous imagination and complexity of the human experience.

In his introduction, Italo Calvino, one of his nations most celebrated writers, describes how he himself became bewitched & bedazzled by his encounter with his nations vast library of folklore. He goes on to say how he reached the two main objectives – The presentation of every type of folktale, and to represent all of the regions of Italy.

“These folk stories are the catalogue of the potential destinies of the men and women,especially for that stage in life when destiny is formed, i,e, youth, beginning with birth, which itself often foreshadows the future, then the departure from home, and finally through the trials of growing up, the attainment of maturity and proof of one’s humanity. This sketch although summary, encompasses everything: the arbitrary divisions of humans, albeit in essence equal, into Kings and poor people, the persecution of the innocent and their subsequent vindication, which are the terms inherent in every life, love unrecognised when first encountered and then no sooner experienced than lost; the common fate of subjection to spells, or having one’s existence predetermined by complex and unknown forces. This complexity pervades one’s entire existence and forces one to struggle to free oneself, to determine one’s own fate; at the same time we can liberate ourselves only if we liberate other people, for this is a sine qua non* of one’s own liberation. There must be fidelity to a goal and purity of heart, values fundamental to salvation and triumph. There must also be beauty, a sign of grace that can be masked by the humble, ugly guise of a frog; and above all, there must present the infinite possibilities of mutation, the unifying element in everything: Men, Beasts, Plants, Things”.   

                                                                                                         ( From the introduction)

L ’Amour et Psyche by François-Edouard picot

whether it’s Dauntless Little John, who being afraid of nothing conquered a giant, through to The Peasant Astrologer – a tale of cunning - , and on to The parrot – who saves a girl’s honour with his storytelling, this compendium of Italian Folktales, can match even the most well known tales from other nations. These tales are the recordings of a nations very essence, told by it’s people, more often than not it’s women & they are told with a grace, a humour, a style, and above all an abiding love of the art of storytelling and a “instinctive skillfulness, that shies away from the constraint of popular tradition, from the unwritten law that common people are capable only of repeating trite themes without actually “creating”; perhaps the narrator thinks that he is producing only variations on a theme, whereas actually he ends up telling us what is in his heart,”.

“Tuscan proverb dear to Nerucci - “The tale is not beautiful if nothing is added to it”- in other words, its value consists in what is woven and rewoven into it” I.C.

Italo Calvino(wikipedia)

Italian Folktales(wikipedia)

  Gherardo Nerucci (wikipedia)

* A book or scholarly work on animals.

*Latin for "without which, not;" hence, an alternative way of expressing the presence of a necessary condition.

An essential or indispensable element or condition; a test used to establish causation in fact

The SKATING RINK

         ROBERTO BOLANO.        

The Skating  rink is told through the successive narratives of three male characters, one a corrupt  petty Gov’t  official, one a small town entrepreneur and the third a poet (the Bolano Character). The plot, as do the male characters, circle around a beautiful  professional figure skater called Nuria, who has lost her place on the Spanish national team & in the process her training venue. The Gov’t official obsessed with Nuria, steps in to save the day & with delusions of heroic worth, diverts Gov’t money to fund the building of a secret skating rink in an abandoned villa, high up on the coast. Of all the novels by Bolano this is the closest to an out and out crime story, although seen through the lens of this particular writer, there is a murder, there are signposts alerting you along the way (the outline of a knife visible through clothing, the mental instability of one the characters etc.), and, although the murder is solved, when the body is found about two-thirds of the way through the book, it is almost an after thought. In this book there is no Detective, sleuthing away, the crime is mundane, an occurrence, there is no cry for justice, this is all about implication, or how to avoid it. The three men are not bothered by who has died, or how, just how it affects their lives. There’s no honour here, no heroism that's not sullied by self interest, or self regard. So although this book features a death, someone is actually murdered, this merely acts as a spotlight onto the characters, making The Skating Rink a Detective tale where the crime is secondary to the protagonists involved.

This book had me puzzled, it reminded me of another book, and at first I thought it was Lawrence Durrell’s “ The Alexandria Quartet” which as a tetralogy offers us four perspectives via four novels on the same  series of events. But that wasn’t it. It was then I realised that it was a tale I’d read last year in Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s Rashomon and 17 other stories, this tale "In the bamboo grove" concerns the murder of a traveller & the alleged rape of his wife, and is told through the differing perspectives of the various witnesses, all of who have their own agenda (including the deceased), yet with this story, there is blood and passion, which although it appears in the Skating Rink it’s more theoretical. Yes the official obsesses over the skater, yet it’s how it affects him, not her, that concerns him, and although the entrepreneur sleeps with Nuria, this seems to be more of a convenience between them both.

Whilst this book may start out wearing the garb of a crime thriller, it some how through the telling manages to twist and turn, as though it passes through some mirror and comes out with it’s internal logic up ended. All we are left with is a vague and intense, unrealized longing. Whether this for some idealized past, or just some ideal, I don’t know & that haunts.

If you have not read any Roberto Bolano before, and this is your first, your introduction to this writers work,  you will enjoy this book, you will see glimpses of that spark, that lust for the written word, that you’ve heard so much about. I’m guessing you will be left slightly quizzical – sparks can, but don’t necessarily, combust into a forest fire, words that merely lust for life can fade, can become jaded.Thankfully here this doesn’t happen, hindsight allows us to look back and unlike Epimetheus*  we are unlikely to trip, knowing full well what he goes on to write and what this book signposts admirably.

Roberto Bolano(wikipedia

In lieu of a field guide(bolano info)

 

*Epimetheus

blog-hop (The Ration Card)

Welcome to this week's Literary Blog Hop as usual  hosted by the ladies from The Blue Bookcase!. The question for this hop has been set by  Mel u from, The Reading Life -
Not long ago I read and posted on The Harp of Burma by Michio Takeyama, 1966. It is one of the very best novels about WWII, written from the point of view of a Japanese Buddhist who was drafted as a combat soldier. He had no idea how long he would be gone or if he would really ever return. He had room in his backpack for one book, so he took The Red and the Black by Stendhal. He carried it through the jungles of South Asia for 4 years. He said it helped keep him sane in the face of all the horrors he saw. This made me wonder what work of literary fiction I would take with me under similar circumstances."
If you were going off to war (or some other similarly horrific situation) and could only take one book with you, which literary book would you take and why?
 
Like most of my fellow bloggers, I’ve perceived this as like an extreme example of desert island discs, a kind of a wartime wish list reduced to the bare basic minimum & rationed.
So if my ration card states only one book it’s -The Rattle Bag, an anthology of poetry edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. In the introduction, this book was described as “amassing itself like a Cairn” ( a man-made pile of stones) and a Cairn has many uses, for example
Used on Trails, usually placed on junctions or places where the trail direction is not obvious.
They may mark a burial site, and may memorialize the dead.
They may mark the summit of a mountain.
Placed at regular intervals, they indicate a path across stony or barren terrain or across glaciers.
The Inuit erect human-shaped cairns, or inunnguaq as milestones or directional markers in the Canadian Arctic.
In North America, cairns may be used for astronomy.
In Norse Greenland, cairns were used as a hunting implement.
In the Canadian Maritimes cairns were used as lighthouse-like holders for fires that guided boats.
In North America, cairns are often petroforms in the shapes of turtles or other animals.
In the United Kingdom, they are often large Bronze Age structures which frequently contain burial cists.
They may have a strong aesthetic purpose, for example in the art of Andy Goldsworthy.
They may be used to commemorate events: anything from a battle site, to the place where a cart tipped over.
Some are merely places where farmers have collected stones removed from a field. These can be seen in the Catskill Mountains, North America where there is a strong Scottish heritage.
They vary from loose, small piles of stones to elaborate feats of engineering. In some places, games are regularly held to find out who can build the most beautiful cairn.
In other words this book of poetry covering writers such as -  Shakespeare,Dickinson, Plath,Blake,Holub,Eliot,Thomas,Byron,Ferlinghetti,Tennyson,Smith,Plutzik,Hardy,Larkin,Johnson,Frost,Zabolotsky,Yeats,Neruda,Ginsberg,Whitman,Joyce,Bishop,Owen,Vallejo, and even that most famous of all poets Anon -  will let me know others have been through this experience, will nourish my heart, will sustain my intellect, will make me laugh, will release tears pent up by my own pride and need to prove myself strong. This anthology is made up of Cairns each one signposting an experience,a feeling, a memory, all amounting to a large Cairn – Hope.


The Rattle Bag (earlier Post)

2 POEMS FOR VALENTINES DAY

The Night Before The Morning After.

                                                                                            For Anne.

I find myself at the old game

the old absurd ecstatic folly-ridden game

of trying to guess your mind

caught up once more in the eternal question-jungle;

“will she come?” “won’t she come?” “Maybe not”.

One half of me says you will be true to yourself

and lose your way once again.

Another and the more naive bit of me assures me

you will arrive come hell or stale porter

blaming me as ever for woeful misdirections

and in effect saying with brown-eyed  refinery:

“why the hell pick such an outlandish place to live?”

And no doubt I shall be wordless in your presence

if you can imagine such a phenomenon

and as we self-consciously attempt to pick up long-loosened reins

my eyes upon you will be playing the old remembered ballet

under the heavy drink-laden dream-laden weight of years

almost embarrassing you into temporary disarray.

You won’t be fooled, however, knowing me well;

as always you will see beyond the quick foolish clown’s mask

far beyond the ready bottle of release, the straw of salvation

the real body alone in his microscopic dust

dreaming dreams forever far beyond his station

studiously looking away from you.

Yet let the old motto endure.

Drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may think.

And that could well spell disaster.

In anticipation of tomorrow

I hope the pleasure we have always found in each other

will outwit the ever-eager hawk of remorse.

Girl, bravely fool me with that old brown-eyed witchcraft

blinding me to the lesser losses of life

and guiding my reason towards the greater humbler gain.

My wish for you upon this wary midnight:

May your life be a warm attendance of light.

Christy Brown

Christy Brown (5 June 1932 – 7 September 1981) was an Irish author, poet,and painter   who had severe cerebral palsy. Although He was most famous for his autobiography My Left Foot, which was later made into an Academy Award-winning film of the same name, he also wrote some really beautiful and romantic poetry.

   pomes  ALL SIZES 

NIGHTSONG.

For Paula

                               

                                    You held me to your

                                     bruised self.

                                     I aching with a want

                                     that held,

                                     it’s own fears.

                                     We spoke words that were

                                     small charms against

                                     uncertainty.

                                     Bright faith, flung

                                     at reality.

                                     I lay half-scared

                                     held strong.

                                     In this dark our host

                                     till touched breathed

                                     it’s night-song,

                                     and the words laid

                                     their ghosts.

san valentino(G.M.)

Saint Valentine's Day, commonly shortened to Valentine's Day is an annual commemoration held on February 14 celebrating love and affection between intimate companions. The day is named after one or more early Christian martyrs, Saint Valentine, and was established by Pope Gelasius I in 496 AD. It was deleted from the Roman calendar of saints in 1969 by Pope Paul VI, but its religious observance is still permitted. It is traditionally a day on which lovers express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards (known as "valentines"). The day first became associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages,  when the tradition of courtly love flourished.
Modern Valentine's Day symbols include the heart-shaped outline, doves, and the figure of the winged Cupid. Since the 19th century, handwritten valentines have given way to mass-produced greeting cards.

   pomes  ALL SIZES 

                                                    If you have a Poem/ Poet, you admire please introduce them to me.

A very Short Introduction to

 Spanish Literature.

My knowledge of the history of Spanish Literature, basically starts & ends with Don Quixote, jump forward a few hundred years and I’m on safer ground. Like most people I’m aware that  Miguel de Cervantes(1547 – 1616) is one of the names behind the invention of the modern novel, in around the 16th century, but there is a massive gap in my knowledge of  nearly half a millennia, luckily this is where this book comes in.
A Very Short Introduction – Spanish Literature (Oxford University Press), provides a handy guide to what turns out to be a rich literary history & in the process defines what it is that makes a national literature. From conquerors to exiles, from the highbrow to the downtrodden, this book sheds light on the multifaceted character of a culture & the literary treasures it has produced. Although this is a small book - at about a 144 pages - it manages to cover a lot of ground through it’s chapter headings ;

• Multilingualism and porous borders

  This chapter attempts to define what is Spanish about “Spanish literature”. By taking into consideration a nations changing political and linguistic map, and then adding in the question of how far back in time one can go and still use the term “Spain” meaning -  a cohesive whole nation state, as opposed to “a multiplicity of Christian And Muslim Kingdoms, both of which had Jewish populations”. It also discusses the subject of non-state nationalism (Basque, Catalan etc.), and the rise of the exile and expatriates from 1492 through to the Franco regime.

• Spanish Literature And Modernity

Here, discussed is the authors definition of modernity & how it came about, covering “nation-formation, Capitalist Modernization, and state centralization as the goal of the restoration period through  the Avant garde of the early 20th century up until writers such as Loriga,and Molina.”

• Gender and sexuality

This chapters argues that since the 1980’s the Spanish Literary canon has changed decisively, due to the introduction of Gender studies. The result of this has been the recovery of a whole host of “forgotten” Women Writers and the analysis of literary representations of Femininity, Masculinity and Same-Sex desire, often in canonical text, whose gender dimensions had been ignored.

• Cultural patrimony

In this final section the author considers two aspects of cultural Patrimony; who has access to it, and how it is transmitted to future generations. Both raise issues about Cultural ownership.

For all it’s erudition, and professorial learning, I didn’t find this a dry read, it made me realise that although works such Don Quixote are a major literary signpost, that's all they are and not the be all & end all of Spanish Literature. Jo Labanyi like all good cartographers places enough information before you, to help you find your way, but because of the V.S.I. format you are not overwhelmed, allowing - in fact stimulating - the urge for future exploration.

Granta The best Of Young Spanish Language Novelists.

“From Borges to Bolaño, the Spanish language has given us some of the most beloved writers of the 20th and 21st centuries. But as the reach of Spanish-language culture extends far beyond Spain and Latin America, and as the US tilts towards a majority Hispanic population, it is time to ask who is next in this exciting tradition.”

This is the first translated issue of Granta’s “Best of young Novelists”, chosen by a panel of six highly distinguished judges we are introduced to a cornucopia of new writing from across the Spanish–speaking world, and in the process signposts a collection of the most promising novelists around today.

All the writers chosen for this book are under thirty five, and have at least one novel, or story collection to their name. From Andres Barba (Spain) to Alejandro Zambra (Chile) this is a fantastic collection of tales with the Spanish language as the link that binds them, this ambitious endeavour unites twenty two writers from eight different countries in a format that allows you to be introduced to them via a short tale.

 Information.

The Very Short Introductions series (or VSI series) is a book series published by the Oxford University Press publishing house since 1995. Each book in the series offers a concise, yet cogent, introduction to a particular subject. Written by acknowledged experts, most books are between 100–150 pages and contain suggestions for further reading. Authors often present personal viewpoints, but each introduction is intended to be balanced and complete.

Oxford University press V.S.I.

OUP(Wikipedia)

Granta magazine was started by students at Cambridge University in 1889, under the name “The Granta”, it was a periodical covering student politics, banter and  literary output, it was named after the river that runs through Cambridge (river Cam).  In 1979 the magazine was reborn, and has since published a great many of the world’s finest writers, tackling some of the most important subjects on this planet, from the very personal life of the individual to the events that have shaped our lives on an international level. Some of the writers who contributed are - Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Saul Bellow, Peter Carey, Raymond Carver, Angela Carter, Bruce Chatwin, James Fenton, Richard Ford, Martha Gellhorn, Nadine Gordimer, Milan Kundera, Doris Lessing, Ian McEwan, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jayne Anne Phillips, Salman Rushdie, George Steiner, Graham Swift, Paul Theroux, Edmund White, Jeanette Winterson and Tobias Wolff.  All the issues going back to 1979 are still available in print.

Granta (The Authors)

Granta(Wikipedia)

MY Introduction to the VSI came from Winstonsdad a fantastic translated literature Blog.

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker

“THERE’s NO EITHER – OR – DIVISION with poems. what’s made up and what’s not made up? What’s the varnished truth, what’s  the unvarnished truth? We don’t care. With prose you first want to know: Is it fiction, is it nonfiction? Everything follows from that. The books  go in different places in the bookstore. But we don’t do that with poems, or with song lyrics. Books of poems go straight to the poetry section. There’s no nonfictional and fictional poetry. The categories don’t exist.”
Paul Chowder is an aging poet, with one award (a Guggenheim,  years ago) and little else to his name.  His career is floundering, his girlfriend has moved out, and he has writers block, in fact he will tell you himself "My life is a lie. My career is a joke. I'm a study in failure." His one lifeline is to write the Introduction to an anthology of poetry, called Only Rhyme, and even this he is failing in, he’d like to do it justice, he’d like to to unveil the mysteries of rhyme and metre, but is not sure he’s the right man for the job. He spends his time contemplating the suffering of the great poets throughout history and whether his own angst is enough, he happily discusses the various  poetic forms and the problems of iambic pentameter and it’s adverse effects on  English-language poetry.Through these musings you learn some of the history of poetry, he will pass on tips to help you write - anything rather than attempt to write himself. All his rambles, discussions, all his procrastination is merely strategy not to write the introduction.
Yet what he reveals is a love for poetry, a love that encompasses not just the greats, your Swinburne's, Tennyson’s, Longfellow, but all those that have followed, regardless of their supposed literary worth.

“Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican jill. We think so then, we thought so still”. I think that was the very first poem I heard, “The Pelican Chorus” by Edward Lear. My mum read it to me. God it was beautiful.  Still is. Those singing Pelicans. They slapped their feet around on those long bars of yellow sand, and they swapped their verb tenses so that then was still and still was then. They were the first to give me a shudder, the shiver the grieving of true poetry---  the feeling that something wasn’t right, but it was all right that it wasn’t right.  In fact it was better than if it had been right.” 

If you love poetry, you will love this book, no prevarication, You Will Love This Book. If poetry was a joy, a love that you put aside as childish whimsy, this will re-introduce you to that love, will spark a curiosity, that will combust to no mere bonfire in your heart.  


Nicholson Baker(Wiki)
Nicholson Baker(Pub)
This was the review that sparked my interest in this novel – A common Reader

LITERARY BLOGHOP.

It’s that time again, a fortnight has passed and those ladies at The Blue Bookcase are shining their light on all things literary and in that process they have posed this question-

What setting (time or place) from a book or story would you most like to visit? Eudora Welty said that, "Being shown how to locate, to place, any account is what does most toward making us believe it...," so in what location would you most like to hang out?

Pondering this, I would first need to clarify a point, at most times in the past to be in a position of thinking “this would be fun” and to have the time to appreciate your location, you would need to be of a certain status, whether this is through wealth, power, or both. So taking that as a given my first thoughts were Libraries, or to be more precise two libraries, now libraries & I have a long history, they were my sanctuary from the rigours of a large family & when I got to secondary school (11+) they were where I hid when playing truant, so libraries it was. My first idea was to go straight to the mother lode - The Great Library of Alexandria - now I know that is not actually the source, that Alexander the Great got the idea upon seeing Royal Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. The Great  Library of Alexandria was the first of its kind to collate serious collections of written material far from it’s own borders, it’s set mission was to collect all the worlds knowledge. The library comprised a Peripatos walk, gardens, a room for shared dining, a reading room, lecture halls and meeting rooms. Now tell me honestly, as a book reader, what's not to like? There are a couple of problems with this as my choice though, the first could be solved by timing as general consensus agrees that Caesar accidentally burned the library down during his visit to Alexandria in 48 BC, so any time before that.

My second would be which book, this is down to the fact that most of the books I have read covering this subject were non-fiction & I no longer have them, except one - George Steiner's After Babel. Phew covered.

My second library would be a quiet haven, a sheltered place, say a private library in Takamutsu, where I could find peace whilst reading the collected works of Natsume Soseki and any other books I found there. I’m guessing that by now there are at least a few people reading this may have realised which book this library is in, but before revealing it here’s another clue - the manager is a Miss Saeki and apart from a previous career as a singer, she maybe the protagonist of the titles mother. So, yeah, this book is “Kafka on the Shore” by Haruki Murakami.

 

Looking back at my choices, I’ve realized both are sedentary, that my exploration of the environment is from a seated position, so a third choice will be more of a boys own adventure, will involve tramping around mountainous areas, crossing roaring seas and lochs containing - alright possibly containing - monsters. It will involve automobiles, boats, planes, bikes, and even walking. My last choice is not particularly chosen because of location or history, but the premise behind the book Raw Spirit – in search of the perfect dram by Iain Banks, and the premise is you’ve been given the job of researching on your favourite drink. Malt whisky is made in some of the most beautiful, rugged, inaccessible areas of Scotland, with some of the least modern methods of transport, resulting in a lot of planning & a unique view of his homeland “its a journey of a 1000 cheers & subsequent wobbly walks”. Along the way he meets people engaged in a centuries old tradition & manages to imbibe, along with a vast quantity of malt, some knowledge of the traditions, practices & eccentricities that make up the life blood of whisky & the distilleries that produce it. This writer more commonly known for works of fiction such as The Wasp Factory and Consider Phlebas (written as Iain M. Banks) he is widely acknowledged as one of Britain's greatest living writers & as a Scotsman is passionate about the Whisky. So my choice is to accompany him, to imbibe the malt, to wobble the route and to revel in the sheer fun that is the book.