Canto | Text
Maceratio I (Track 1)
"Wie du dich ausstirbst in mir" by Paul Celan
Wie du dich ausstirbst in mir:
noch im letzen
zerschlissenen
Knoten Atems
Steckst du mit einem
Splitter
Leben.
From "Im Leeren" by Celan
warf ich mich Steinen zu, [...], was ich wurde.
From "Ehmals und Jetzt" by Friedrich Hölderlin
In jüngern Tagen war ich des Morgens froh,
Des Abends weint ich [...]
From "Botschaft" by Ingeborg Bachmann
[...], die Geschichte, hat uns ein Grab bestellt,
Aus dem es keine Auferstehung gibt.
Poenitentia I (Track 2)
Psalm 22:
V. 1: Deus, Deus meus, respice in me: quare me dereliquisti?
V. 2: Deus meus, clamabo per diem, et non exaudies:
V. 14: Sicut aqua effusus sum; et dispersa sunt omnia ossa mea.
V. 15: In pulverem mortis deduxisti me.
Psalm 25:
V. 15: Respice in me, et miserere mei; quia unicus et pauper sum ego.
Psalm 27:
V. 9: Quoniam pater meus et mater mea dereliquerunt me; Dominus autem assumpsit me.
V. 10: Legem pone mihi, Domine, in via tua, et dirige me in semitam rectam, propter inimicos meos.
V. 12: Ne tradideris me in animas tribulantium me, quoniam insurrexerunt in me testes iniqui, et mentita est iniquitas sibi.
Psalm 28:
V. 3: Ne simul trahas me cum peccatoribus, et cum operantibus iniquitatem ne perdas me; qui loquuntur pacem cum proximo suo, mala autem in cordibus eorum.
V. 4: Da illis secundum opera eorum, et secundum nequitiam ad inventionum ipsorum. Secundum opera manuum eorum tribue illis, redde retributionem eorum ipsis.
V. 5: Quoniam non intellexerunt opera Domini et in opera manuum ejus; destrues illos, et non ædificabis eos.
V. 7: Dominus adjutor meus, et protector meus; in ipso speravit cor meum, et adjutus sum: et refloruit caro mea, et ex voluntate mea confitebor ei.
From "Une Charogne" by Charles Baudelaire
Rappelez-vous l’objet que nous vîmes, mon âme, [...]
Les jambes en l’air, comme une femme lubrique, [...]
Ouvrait d’une façon nonchalante et cynique [...]
Cilice (Musica Disciplina)
Peccata I (Track 3)
“Délires II, Alchimie du Verbe” from Une Saison en Enfer by Arthur Rimbaud
A moi. L’histoire d’une de mes folies.
Depuis longtemps je me vantais de posséder tous les paysages possibles, et trouvais dérisoires les célébrités de la peinture et de la poésie modernes.
J’aimais les peintures idiotes, dessus des portes, décors, toiles de saltimbanques, enseignes, enluminures populaires; la littérature démodée, latin d’église, livres érotiques sans orthographe, romans de nos aïeules, contes de fées, petits livres de l’enfance, opéras vieux, refrains niais, rhythmes naïfs.
Je rêvais croisades, voyages de découvertes dont on n’a pas de relations, républiques sans histoires, guerres de religion étouffées, révolutions de meurs, déplacements de races et de continents: je croyais à tous les enchantements.
J’inventai la couleur des voyelles!—A noir, E blanc, I rouge, O bleu, U vert.—Je réglai la forme et le movement de chaque consonne, et, avec des rythmes instinctifs, je me flattai d’inventer un verbe poétique accessible, un jour ou l’autre, à tous les sens. Je réservais la traduction.
Ce fut d’abord une étude. J’écrivais des silences, des nuits, je notais l’inexprimable, je fixais des vestiges.
[...]
La vieillerie poétique avait une bonne part dans mon alchimie du verbe.
Je m’habituai à l’hallucination simple: je voyais très franchement une mosquée à la place d’une usine, une école de tambours faite par des anges, des calèches sur les routes du ciel, un salon au fond d’un lac; les monstres, les mystères; un titre de vaudeville dressait des épouvantes devant moi!
Puis j’expliquai mes sophismes magiques avec l’hallucination des mots!
Je finis par trouver sacré el désordre de mon esprit. J’étais oisif, en proie à une lourde fièvre: j’enviais la félicité des bêtes,—les chenilles, qui représentent l’innocence des limbes, les taupes, le sommeil de la virginité!
Mon caractère s’aigrissait. Je disais adieu au monde dans d’espèces de romances:
[...]
Le vent de Dieu jetait des glaçons aux mares;
Inferno, Canto I, l. 94-99 by Dante Alighieri
ché questa bestia, per la qual tu gride,
non lascia altrui passar per la sua via,
ma tanto lo ’mpedisce che l’uccide;
e ha natura sì malvagia e ria,
che mai non empie la bramosa voglia,
e dopo 'l pasto ha pìu fame che pria.
Inferno, Canto I, l. 113-117, Dante
[...], e io sarò tua guida,
e trarrotti di qui per loco etterno,
ove udirai le disperate strida,
vedrai li antichi spiriti dolenti,
ch’a la seconda morte ciascun grida;
Poenitentia II (Track 4)
Psalm 37:
V. 11: Mansueti autem haereditabunt terram, et delectabuntur in multitudine pacis.
Psalm 43:
V. 2: Quia tu es, Deus, fortitudo mea, quare me repulisti? et quare tristis incedo, dum affligit me inimicus?
V. 5: Confitebor tibi in cithara, Deus, Deus meus. Quare tristis es, anima mea? et quare conturbas me?
Psalm 77:
V. 2: In die tribulationis meae Deum exquisivi; manibus meis nocte contra eum, et non sum deceptus. Renuit consolari anima mea;
Psalm 130:
V. 1: De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine;
V. 2: Domine, exaudi vocem meam. Fiant aures tuae intendentes in vocem deprecationis meae.
Psalm 131:
V. 2: ... sicut ablactatus est super matre sua, ita retributio in anima mea.
From "Das Göttliche" by JW von Goethe
Denn unfühlend
Ist die Natur:
Es leuchtet die Sonne
Über Bös’ und Gute.
Und dem Verbrecher
Glänzen, wie dem Besten
Der Mond und die Sterne.
From "Une Charogne" by Baudelaire
Les mouches bourdonnaient sur ce ventre putride,
D’òu sortaient de noirs bataillons
De larves, qui coulaient comme un épais liquide
Le long de ces vivants haillons.
Tout cela descendait, montait comme une vague,
Ou s’élançait en pétillant;
On eût dit que le corps, enflé d’un souffle vague,
Vivait en se multipliant.
Et ce monde rendait une étrange musique,
Comme l’eau courante et le vent,
Ou le grain qu’un vanneur d’un movement rhythmique
Agite et tournée dans son van.
Les forms s’effaçaient et n’étaient plus qu’un rêve,
Une ébauche lente à venir,
Sur la toile oubliée, et que l’artiste achève
Seulement par le souvenir.
Peccata II (Track 5)
“Délires II, Alchimie du Verbe” from Une Saison en Enfer by Rimbaud
J’aimai le désert, les vergers brûlés, les boutiques fanées, les boissons tiédies. Je me traînais dans les ruelles puantes et, les yeux fermés, je m’offrais au soleil, dieu de feu.
“Général, s’il reste un vieux canon sur tes remparts en ruines, bombarde-nous avec des blocs de terre sèche. Aux glaces des magasins splendides! Dans les salons! Fais manger sa poussière à la ville. Oxyde les gargouilles. Emplis les boudoirs de poudre de rubis brûlante...”
Oh! Le moucheron enviré à la pissotière de l’auberge, amoureux de la bourrache, et que dissout un rayon!
[...]
Enfin, ô Bonheur, ô raison, j’écartai du ciel l’azur, qui est du noir, et je vécus, étincelle d’or de la lumière nature. De joie, je prenais une expression bouffonne et égarée au possible:
[...]
Mangez les cailloux qu’on brise,
Les vielles pierres d’églises;
Les galets des vieux deluges,
Pains semés dans les vallées grises.
Le loup criait sous les feuilles
En crachant les belles plumes
De son repas de volailles:
Comme lui je me consume.
"Schatten Rosen Schatten" by Bachmann
Unter einem fremden Himmel
Schatten Rosen
Schatten
auf einer fremden Erde
zwischen Rosen und Schatten
in einem fremden Wasser
mein Schatten
Psalm 103:
V. 14: For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.
V. 15: As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower in the field so he flourisheth.
V. 16: For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.
Psalm 121:
V. 1: I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
V. 2: My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.
V. 3: He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber. V. 4: Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
V. 5: The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.
V. 6: The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
V. 7: The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
V. 8: The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.
From "A Carcass" by Baudelaire
—And yet you will be like this filth,
this horrible contamination,
star of my eyes, [...]
Purgatorio, Canto II, l. 31-36 by Dante
See how he scorns all instruments of earth,
Needing no oar, no sail but his own wings,
Between shores that span so vast an ocean’s girth.
Purgatorio, Canto II, l. 121-123 by Dante
"[...] Why all this dawdling? Why such negligence?
Run to the mountains, rub away the filth
That will not let you see God’s countenance."
"Humility" by Goethe
When I look at the works of the masters,
I see what they did;
when I look at my own bits and pieces,
I see what I ought to have done.
Peccata III (Track 7)
“Délires II, Alchimie du Verbe,” from Une Saison en Enfer, Rimbaud
Je devins un opéra fabuleux: je vis que tous les êtres ont une fatalité de Bonheur: l’action n’est pas la vie, mais une façon de gâcher quelque force, un énervement. La morale est la faiblesse de la cervelle.
A chaque être, plusieurs autres vies me semblaient dues. Ce monsieur ne sait ce qu’il fait: il est un ange. Cette famille est une nichée de chiens. Devant plusieurs hommes, je causai tout haut avec un moment d’une de leurs autres vies.—Ainsi, j’ai aimé un porc.
Aucun des sophismes de la folie,—la folie qu’on enferme,—n’a été oublié par moi: je pourrais les redire tous, je tiens le système.
Ma santé fut menacée. La terreur venait. Je tombais dans des sommeils de plusieurs jours, et, levé, je continuais les rêves les plus tristes. J’étais mûr pour le trépas, et par une route de dangers ma faiblesse me menait aux confins du monde et la Cimmérie, patrie de l’ombre et des tourbillons.
Je dus voyager, distraire les enchantements assembles dans mon cerveau. Sur la mer, que j’aimais comme si elle eût dû me laver d’une souillure, je voyais se lever la croix consolatrice. J’avais été damné par l’arc-en-ciel. Le Bonheur était ma fatalité, mon remords, mon ver: ma vie serait toujours trop immense pour être dévouée à la force et à la beauté.
Le Bonheur! Sa dent, douce à la mort, m’avertissait au chant du coq,—ad matutinum, au Christus venit—dans les plus sombres villes:
[...]
Cela s’est passé. Je sais aujoud’hui saluer la beauté.
"An die Nachgeborenen (Stanza I)" by Bertolt Brecht
Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten!
Das arglose Wort ist töricht. Eine glatte Stirn
Deutet auf Unempfindlichkeit hin. Der Lachende
Hat die furchtbare Nachricht
Nur noch nicht empfangen.
Was sind sind das für Zeiten, wo
Ein Gespräch über Bäume fast ein Verbrechen ist
Weil es ein Schweigen über so viele Untaten einschliesst!
Der dort ruhig über die Strasse geht
Ist wohl nicht mehr erreichbar für seine Freunde
Die in Not sind?
Es is wahr: ich verdiene noch meinen Unterhalt
Aber glaubt mir: das ist nu rein Zufall. Nichts
Von dem, was ich tue, berechtigt mich dazu, mich satt zu essen.
Zufällig bin ich verschont (Wenn mein Glück aussetzt
Bin ich verloren.)
Man sagt mir: iss und trink du! Sei froh, dass du hast!
Aber wie kann ich essen und trinken, wenn
Ich es dem Hungernden entreisse, was ich esse, und
Mein Glas Wasser einem Verdurstenden fehlt?
Und doch esse und trinke ich.
Ich ware gerne weise.
In den altern Büchern steht, was weise ist:
Sich aus dem Streit der Welt halten und die kurze Zeit
Ohne Furcht verbringen
Auch ohne Gewalt auskommen
Böses mit Gutem vergelten
Seine Wünsche nicht erfüllen, sondern vergessen
Gilt für weise.
Alles das kann ich nicht:
Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten!
From "Wir gehen, die Herzen im Staub" by Bachmann
Wir singen, den Ton in der Brust.
Dort ist er noch niemals entsprungen.
Nur manchmal hat einer gewusst:
wir sind nicht zum Bleiben gezwungen.
"How you die out in me" by Paul Celan
How you die out in me:
down to the last
worn-out
knot of breath
you’re there, with a
splinter
of life.
From "In Emptiness" by Celan
I cast myself to stones, [...], what I became.
From "Then and Now" by Friedrich Hölderlin
In younger days each morning I rose with joy,
To weep at nightfall [...]
From "A Message" by Ingeborg Bachmann
[...], history, has ordered for us a grave
From which there is no resurrection.
Psalm 22:
V. 1: O God, my God, look upon me. Why have you forsaken me?
V. 2: O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not:
V. 14: I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint.
V. 15: Thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
Psalm 25:
V. 15: Look upon me and have mercy on me; for I am alone and poor.
Psalm 27:
V. 9: For my father and my mother have left me behind, but the Lord has taken me up.
V. 10: O Lord, establish a law for me in your way, and direct me in the right path, because of my enemies.
V. 12: Do not surrender me to the souls of those who trouble me. For unjust witnesses have risen up against me, and iniquity has lied to itself.
Psalm 28:
V.3: Draw me not away with the wicked, and with the workers of iniquity, which speak peace to their neighbours, but mischief is in their hearts.
V. 4: Give to them according to their works and according to the wickedness of their inventions. Assign to them according to the works of their hands. Repay them with their own retribution.
V. 5: Since they have not understood the works of the Lord and the works of his hands, you will destroy them, and you will not build them up.
V. 7: The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him.
From "A Carcass" by Charles Baudelaire
Remember the object that we saw, love of my soul, [...]
Legs in the air, like a slut, [...]
opened in a casual, inviting fashion [...]
“Ravings II, Alchemy of the Word” from A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud
Now for me! The story of one of my follies.
For a long time I boasted of possessing every possible landscape and held in derision the celebrities of modern painting and poetry.
I loved maudlin pictures, the painted panels over doors, stage sets, the back-drops of mountebanks, old inn signs, popular prints; antiquated literature, church Latin, erotic books with poor spelling, the novels of our grandfathers, fairytales, children’s storybooks, old operas, inane refrains, and artless rhythms.
I dreamed of crusades, unrecorded voyages of discovery, untroubled republics, religious wars stifled, revolutions in customs, the displacements of races and continents: I believe in all marvels.
I invented the colour of vowels—A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green,—I regulated the form and the movement of every consonant, and with instinctive rhythms I prided myself on inventing a poetic language accessible some day to all the senses. I reserved all rights of translation.
At first it was an experiment. I wrote silences, I wrote the night, I recorded the inexpressible, I fixed frenzies in their flight.
[...]
Poetic quaintness played a large part in my alchemy of the word.
I became an adept at simple hallucination: in place of a factory I really saw a mosque, a school for drummers led by angels, carriages on the highways of the sky, a drawing-room at the bottom of a lake; monsters, mysteries; the title of a melodrama would raise horrors before me!
Then I would explain my magic sophistries using the hallucination of words!
Finally I came to regard as sacred the disorder of my mind. I was idle, full of a heavy fever: I envied the felicity of beasts, caterpillars that represent the innocence of limbo, moles, the somnolence of virginity!
My temper soured. I said farewell to the world in ballad-style.
[...]
God’s wind blew icicles into the ponds;
Inferno, Canto I, l. 94-99 by Dante Alighieri
The savage brute that makes thee cry for dread
Lets no man pass this road of hers, but still,
Trammels him, till at last she lays him dead;
Vicious is her nature, and framed for ill;
When filled she craves more fiercely than before;
Her raging greed can never reach her fill.
Inferno, Canto I, l. 113-117, Dante
[...], and pass with me
Through a place eternal and terrible,
Where thou shalt hear despairing cries, and see
Long-departed souls that in their torment dire
Howl for the second death perpetually.
Poenitentia III (Track 6)
Psalm 103:
V. 14: Quoniam ipse cognovit Sigmentum nostrum; recordatus est quoniam pulvis sumus.
V. 15: Homo, sicut foenum dies ejus; tamquam flos agri, sic efflorebit:
V. 16: Quoniam spiritus pertransibit in illo, et non subsistet: et non cognoscet amplius locum suum.
Psalm 121:
V. 1: Levavi oculos meos in montes, unde veniet auxilium mihi.
V. 2: Auxilium meum a Domino, qui fecit caelum et terram.
V. 3: Non det in commotionem pedem tuum, neque dormitet qui custodit te.
V. 4: Ecce non dormitabit neque dormiet qui custodit Israel.
V. 5: Dominus custodit te, Dominus protectio tua super manum dexteram tuam.
V. 6: Per diem sol non uret te, neque luna per noctem.
V. 7: Dominus custodit te ab omni malo; custodiat animam tuam Dominus.
V. 8: Dominus custodiat introitum tuum et exitum tuum, ex hoc nunc et usque in saeculum.
From "Une Charogne" by Baudelaire
—Et pourtant vous serez semblable à cette ordure,
A cette horrible infection,
Étoile de mes yeux, [...]
Purgatorio, Canto II, l. 31-36 by Dante
Vedi che sdegna li argomenti umani,
sì che remo non vuol, né altro velo
che l’ali sue, tra liti sì lontani.
Purgatorio, Canto II, l. 121-123 by Dante
“[...] qual negligenza, quale stare è questo?
Correte al monte a spogliarvi lo scoglio
ch’esser non lascia a voi Dio manifesto.”
"Demut" by Goethe
Seh ich die Werke der Meister an,
So seh ich das, was sie getan;
Betracht ich meine Siebensachsen,
Seh ich, was ich hätt sollen machen.
Psalm 37:
V. 11: But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.
Psalm 43:
V. 2: For thou art the God of my strength: why dost thou cast me off? Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
V. 5: Yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, O God my god. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me?
Psalm 77:
V. 2: In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord: my sore ran in the night, and ceased not: my soul refused to be comforted.
Psalm 130:
V. 1: Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.
V. 2: Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.
Psalm 131:
V. 2: ...as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child.
From "Divinity" by JW von Goethe
For Nature
is unfeeling:
the sun shines
on the evil and on the good,
and the criminal
as well as the best of men
sees the brightness of the moon and the stars.
From "A Carcass" by Baudelaire
The flies buzzed over that rotting belly,
from which came black battalions
of larvae, flowing like a viscous liquid
along those living rags.
It all rose and fell like a wave,
or darted, bubbling;
it was as if the body, swollen by an undefined breath,
lived by multiplying.
And this world gave off strange music,
like running water and wind,
or the grain that a winnower rhythmically shakes
and spins in his basket.
The shapes vanished and were no more than a dream,
a slowly forming sketch
forgotten on the canvas, and completed by the artist
only from memory.
“Ravings II, Alchemy of the Word” from A Season in Hell by Rimbaud
I love the desert, dried orchards, faded shops and tepid drinks. I dragged myself through stinking alleys and, eyes closed, gave myself to the sun, God of fire.
“General, if on your ruined ramparts an old cannon remains, bombard us with lumps of dried mud,—On the mirrors of magnificent shops! In drawing-rooms! Make the city eat its dust. Oxidize the water-sprouts. Fill boudoirs with the burning powder of rubies...”
Oh! The drunken fly in the inn’s urinal, enamoured of borage, dissolved by a sunbeam!
[...]
At last, O happiness, O reason, I brushed from the sky the azure that is darkness, and I lived—gold spark of pure light. Out of joy I took on an expression as clownish and blank as possible:
[...]
Eat the pebbles that one breaks,
Church’s old stones;
Gravel of ancient deluge taste,
And loaves scattered in grey brakes.
Howling underneath the leaves
The wolf spits out the lovely plumes
Of his feast of fowls:
Like him I am consumed.
"Shadows Roses Shadows" by Bachmann
Under an alien sky
Shadows roses
Shadow
on an alien earth
between roses and shadows
in alien waters
my shadow
“Ravings II, Alchemy of the Word” from A Season in Hell by Rimbaud
I became a fabulous opera; I saw that all creatures have a fatality of happiness: action is not life, but only a way of spoiling some force, an enervation. Morality is weakness of the brain.
It seemed to me that to every creature several other lives were due. This gentleman knows not what he does: he is an angel. This family is a litter of puppies. With several men I have spoken aloud with a moment of one of their lives. Thus it was I loved a pig.
Not a single sophistry of madness—madness to be confined—was forgotten: I could recite them all again, I know the system.
My health was threatened. Terror came. I would fall into a slumber of days, and getting up would go on with the same sad dreams. I was ripe for death and along a road of perils my weakness led me to the confines of the world and of Cimmeria, home of whirlwinds and darkness.
I had to travel, divert the spells assembled in my brain. Over the sea, that I loved as though it were to cleanse me of a stain, I saw the comforting cross arise. I had been damned by the rainbow. Happiness was my fatality, my remorse, my worm: my life would always be too enormous to be devoted to strength and to beauty.
Happiness! Its tooth deadly sweet, warned me at the crowing of the cock,—ad matutinum, at the Christus venit,—in the darkest cities:
[...]
This is all over. Now I know how to salute beauty.
"To Posterity (Stanza I)" by Bertolt Brecht
Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.
Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
And he who walks calmly across the street,
Is he not out of reach of his friends
In trouble?
It is true: I earn my living
But, believe me, it is only an accident.
Nothing that I do entitles me to eat my fill.
By chance I was spared (If my luck leaves me
I am lost.)
They tell me: eat and drink. Be glad you have it!
But how can I eat and drink
When my food is snatched from the hungry
And my glass of water belongs to the thirsty?
And yet I eat and drink.
I would gladly be wise.
The old books tell us what wisdom is:
Avoid the strife of the world, live out your little time
Fearing no one,
Using no violence,
Returning good for evil—
Not fulfillment of desire but forgetfulness
Passes for wisdom.
I can do none of this:
Indeed I live in the dark ages!
From "We Go, Our Hearts in the Dust" by Bachmann
We sing, the sound in our breast.
From there it was never released.
Only sometimes did one attest
that remaining was never decreed.
Poenitentia IV (Track 8)
Psalm 123:
V. 1: Ad te levavi oculos meos, [...]
V. 3: Miserere nostri, Domine, miserere nostri, quia multum repleti sumus despectione;
V. 4: Quia multum repleta est anima nostra opprobrium abundantibus, et despectio superbis.
From "Ehmals und Jetzt" by Hölderlin
[...] jetzt, da ich älter bin,
Beginn ich zweifelnd meinen Tag, doch
Heilig und heiter ist mir sein Ende
From "Une Charogne" by Baudelaire
Oui! Telle vous serez, [...]
Après les derniers sacrements,
Quand vous irez, sous l’herbe et les floraisons grasses,
Moisir parmi les ossements.
Alor, ô ma beauté, dites à la vermine
Qui vous manger de baisers,
Que j’ai gardé la forme et l’essence divine
De mes amours décomposés!
Paradiso, Canto I, l. 76-84 by Dante
Quando la rota che tu sempiterni
desiderato, a sé mi fece atteso
con l’armonia che temperi e discerni,
parvemi tanto allor del ciel acceso
de la fiamma del sol, che pioggia o fiume
lago non fece alcun tanto disteso.
La novità del suono e ‘l grande lume
di lor cagion m’accesero un disio
mai non sentito di cotanto acume.
From "Hab ich nur geschrieben" by Goethe
Immer hab ich nur geschrieben,
Wie ichs fühle, wie ichs meine,
Und so spalt ich mich, ihr Lieben,
Und bin immerfort der Eine.
Psalm 123:
V. 1: Unto thee I lift up mine eyes, [...]
V. 3: Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us: for we are exceedingly filled with contempt.
V. 4: Our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorning of those that are at ease, and with the contempt of the proud.
From "Then and Now" by Hölderlin
... now, in my later years,
Though doubting I begin my day, yet
Always its end is serene and holy.
From "A Carcass" by Baudelaire
Thus you will be, [...]
after the final sacrament,
when you will go, beneath the grass and the thick floral abundance,
to moulder among the bones.
Well then, oh my beauty, tell the vermin
who will devour you with kisses,
that I have kept the form and the divine essence
of my decomposed loves!
Paradiso, Canto I, l. 76-84 by Dante
The wheel Thou mak’st eternal through innate
Desire of thee, no sooner took my ear
With strains which Thou dost tune and modulate,
Than I saw blaze on me so vast a sphere
Fired by the sun, that never rain nor streams
Formed such a huge illimitable mere.
The newness of the sound, the bright and burning beams,
Kindled my eagerness to know their cause
Beyond the yearning of my dearest dreams.
From "I have always written" by Goethe
I have always written
just what I felt, just what I thought;
and thus, my dear triends, I split myself up
and remain always one and the same.
Maceratio II (Track 9)
From "Lebenslauf" by Hölderlin
So durchlauf ich des Lebens
Bogen und kehre, woher ich kam.
From "The Course of Life" by Hölderlin
So I follow the arc of
Life and return to my starting place.
...the crisis of conscience when making war but the need is to make love (and vice-versa)...
"Canción de Prostesta (a Silvio)" by Roque Dalton
Cayó mortalmente herido de un machetazo en la guitarra
pero aún tuvo tiempo de sacar su mejor canción de la funda
y disparar con ella contra su asesino
que pareció momentáneamente desconcertado
llevándose los indices a los oídos
y pidiendo a gritos
que apagaran la luz.
You Choose
"Song of Protest (for Silvio)" by Roque Dalton
He fell mortally wounded by a machete stroke chord from the guitar
and yet had time to draw his best song from its holster
and shoot it at his murderer,
who seemed momentarily disconcerted,
getting hit right in the ear with it
and calling for a shout
to turn off the light
"Historia de un amore" from Taberna y otros lugares by Roque Dalton
Un día te arrastraré hasta mi país, [...]
Esa sera mi larga venganza,
el capítulo final de esta guerra amorosa: [...]
Claro,
que para ello habría que hacer antes una revoluçión, [...]
[Escrito en una servilleta]
Alzo mi copa, camaradas,
y ante todo pido que me perdonéis
por atravesar sin permiso y sin compostura
las puertas de la emoción:
nuestro hermano de tan lejano país,
nuestra hija de las entrañas, niña de nuestros ojos,
fundan su noble casa sobre una firme piedra.
Hijos del pueblo, comunistas los dos,
han escuchado
la fulimante voz del corazón.
La alegria es también revolucionaria, camaradas,
como el trabajo y la paz.
Boda de flores rojas,
hurra, por ellos!
Mucho amor uno al otro!
Siempre fieles y mutuamente apoyados
nos darán hijos hermosos
(sea esto dicho con el perdón)
que lucirán muy bien los primeros de Mayo.
Y es que a partir de ahora
cada uno es un camarada
multiplicando por dos.
Esto es como si dijéramos
el lado práctico del romance.
Comamos y bebamos, camaradas.
"History of a love affair" from The Tavern and Other Places by Roque Dalton
Some day I’ll drag you over to my country, [...]
It’ll be my big revenge,
The final battle in this war of love: [...]
Certainly,
The best thing to happen before a revolution, [...]
[Written on a napkin]
A toast, comrades,
And, above all, I ask you to forgive me
for crossing without permission and without embarrasment
the gates of emotion:
[To] our brother from a distant land,
our daughter straight from the womb,
our pride and joy,
a fine house built on firm ground.
Children of the people,
Communists both,
Who have heard the people’s voice.
This joy is revolutionary,
Including work and peace.
A marriage of red flowers,
Hurrah for them!
All of our love!
May they be always loyal and loving
And have beautiful children
(and, if you’ll forgive my saying it)
who are as lovely as the first of May.
And now that everyone is pairing off,
[We see] the more practical side of romance.
Comrades, let’s [now] eat and drink.