{"id":7644,"date":"2015-07-26T23:58:01","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T02:58:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/culturedarm.com\/?p=7644"},"modified":"2015-07-30T03:31:11","modified_gmt":"2015-07-30T06:31:11","slug":"cultureteca-26-07-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/cultureteca-26-07-15\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultureteca 26.07.15"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cultureteca<\/a><\/p>\n

For the opening part of this week’s Cultureteca<\/a>, let’s look back precisely one hundred years, to some of the poetry being published in the Russian Empire and the United States in July 1915. Then onto a correspondence between Bj\u00f6rk and the philosopher Timothy Morton; the week’s music featuring\u00a0Robyn, Erykah Badu, and Kanye West; and athletics highlights from the Anniversary Games in London.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

100 Years Ago in Russian and American Poetry: Vladimir Mayakovsky and Mina Loy<\/strong><\/p>\n

From December 1913 until the following April, Vladimir Mayakovsky along with his fellow Russian Futurist poets toured cities across the southeast of the Russian Empire, extending to parts of modern-day Crimea<\/a>,\u00a0Ukraine<\/a>, and Moldova. In Odessa in January 1914, Mayakovsky met Maria Denisova, and fell into a love that proved unrequited. He began composing what would become ‘A Cloud in Trousers’ (‘\u041e\u0431\u043b\u0430\u043a\u043e \u0432 \u0448\u0442\u0430\u043d\u0430\u0445’).<\/p>\n

Mayakovsky had published his first poems in December 1912, as part of the Russian Futurist’s debut\u00a0collection A Slap in the Face of Public Taste <\/em>(\u041f\u043e\u0449\u0451\u0447\u0438\u043d\u0430 \u043e\u0431\u0449\u0435\u0441\u0442\u0432\u0435\u043d\u043d\u043e\u043c\u0443 \u0432\u043a\u0443\u0441\u0443<\/em>). This contained the Russian movement’s manifesto, which called to ‘Throw\u00a0Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc., etc., overboard from the ship of modernity’. In 1913 he published his first solo collection of poems, I<\/em> (\u042f<\/em>). ‘A Cloud in Trousers’ was finished in July 1915 in Kuokkala – whose Finnish name was changed in 1948 to Repino, in honour of its famous former resident, the painter Ilya Repin.<\/p>\n

Sections\u00a0of ‘A Cloud in Trousers’ had already been published in February, in the magazine\u00a0Sagittarius<\/em> (\u0421\u0442\u0440\u0435\u043b\u0435\u0446<\/em>); and more appeared elsewhere in August. The completed poem emerged in September, in an edition published by Osip Brik. However this version was severely censored, and the title changed: Mayakovsky initially wanted the poem to be called ‘The Thirteenth Apostle’.<\/p>\n

The uncensored text would be printed in early 1918, by ASIS Publishing. Prefacing that edition, Mayakovsky summarised ‘A Cloud in Trousers’ as ‘four cries of the four parts […] “Down with your love”, “Down with your art”, “Down with your system”, “Down with your religion”‘. He dedicated the poem to Lilya Brik.<\/p>\n

Prologue and first part of ‘A Cloud in Trousers’, by Vladimir Mayakovsky (1915)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Your thought,
\ndreaming on a softened brain
\nlike a blown-up lackey on a greasy couch,
\nI\u2019ll taunt with a bloody scrap of heart,
\nmock to my full, insolent and caustic.<\/p>\n

Not one gray hair is in my soul,
\nno old man\u2019s tenderness!
\nThe world shakes from the might of my voice,
\nI go\u2014a handsome,
\ntwentytwoyearold.<\/p>\n

Tender ones!
\nYou put your love on violins.
\nThe vulgar put love on kettle drums.
\nBut to turn yourself inside out, as I,
\nand become nothing but lips
\nthis you can\u2019t do!<\/p>\n

Come learn\u2014
\nfrom the drawing room, you cambric,
\nproper bureaucrat of the angelic league.<\/p>\n

And the one who calmly flicks her lips
\nlike a cook the pages of her cook book.<\/p>\n

If you want\u2014
\nI\u2019ll rage from meat
\n\u2014and, like the sky changing its tones\u2014
\nif you want\u2014
\nI\u2019ll be irreproachably tender,
\nnot a man, but\u2014a cloud in trousers!<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe there\u2019s flowering Nice!
\nAgain they praise themselves through me,
\nmen stale like a hospital,
\nand women worn out like a proverb.<\/p>\n

I.<\/p>\n

You think it\u2019s malaria raving?<\/p>\n

It happened,
\nhappened in Odessa.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll come at four,\u201d Maria said.<\/p>\n

Eight.
\nNine.
\nTen.<\/p>\n

Then evening
\nleft the windows
\ninto a night horror,
\nfrowning,
\nDecemberish.<\/p>\n

The candelabras sneer and neigh
\nat the senile back.<\/p>\n

You wouldn\u2019t know me now:
\nA sinewed colossus
\ngroans,
\nwrithes.
\nWhat could such a clod want?
\nBut the clod wants much!<\/p>\n

Because for me it\u2019s nothing
\nthat I\u2019m bronze\u2014
\nand the heart\u2019s\u2014cold iron scrap.
\nAt night I want to bury my sound
\nin softness,
\nin woman.<\/p>\n

And so,
\ncolossal,
\nI hunch at the window,
\nmelt the little pane with my forehead.
\nWill love be or not?
\nWhat kind\u2014
\nbig or tiny?
\nBig, how from such a body:
\nIt must be small,
\na submissive baby love.
\nIt cringes from the blaring horns.
\nLoves the clink of harness bells.<\/p>\n

Still and still,
\nburying my face in the rain
\nagainst its pitted face,
\nI wait,
\nspattered by the thunder of the city\u2019s surf.<\/p>\n

Midnight, racing with a knife,
\ncaught up,
\nslaughtered\u2014
\nto Hell with him!<\/p>\n

Twelve o\u2019clock fell
\nlike a head from the executioner\u2019s block.<\/p>\n

Gray raindrops wailed together
\non windowpanes,
\nmassed into a grimace,
\nas the chimeras wail
\non the Parisian Cathedral of the Mother of God.<\/p>\n

Bitch!
\nWhat, still not enough?
\nSoon my mouth\u2019ll rip itself apart with a scream.<\/p>\n

I hear:
\nQuietly,
\na nerve jumped
\nlike a patient from his bed.
\nAnd so\u2014
\nat first, barely-barely,
\nit paced around,
\nthen ran,
\nfrantic,
\nprecise.
\nNow with another two
\nrace in a tap dance of despair.<\/p>\n

Plaster crashed on the ground floor.<\/p>\n

Nerves\u2014
\nbig,
\nlittle,
\nmany!\u2014
\ngallop enraged,
\nand already
\nthe nerves\u2019 legs give way!<\/p>\n

And the night oozes and oozes around the room,\u2014
\nthe waterlogged eye can\u2019t pull itself from the ooze.<\/p>\n

Doors banged suddenly,
\nas would the hotel\u2019s
\nchattering teeth.<\/p>\n

You entered,
\nsharp, like \u201cso there!\u201d
\ntormenting your suede gloves,
\nyou said:
\n\u201cYou know\u2014
\nI\u2019m getting married.\u201d<\/p>\n

Okay, so get married.
\nIt\u2019s nothing.
\nI\u2019ll make it.
\nYou see\u2014how calm I am!
\nLike a dead man\u2019s
\npulse.<\/p>\n

Remember?
\nYou said:
\n\u201cJack London,
\nmoney,
\nlove,
\npassion\u201d\u2014
\nBut I saw only one:
\nyou\u2014Gioconda
\nthat had to be stolen!<\/p>\n

And they stole.<\/p>\n

Again, in love I\u2019ll go and play around,
\nthe arch of my brows lit by fire.
\nSo what!
\nEven in a house burned to the ground
\nhomeless bums sometimes live!<\/p>\n

You taunt me?
\n\u201cYour emeralds of madness are fewer
\nthan a beggar\u2019s kopeks!\u201d
\nRemember!
\nPompeii perished
\nby taunting Vesuvius!<\/p>\n

Heh!
\nGentlemen!
\nLovers
\nof sacrileges,
\ncrimes,
\nbutcheries\u2014
\nbut the most horrible
\nhave you seen it?\u2014
\nmy face
\nwhen
\nI
\nam absolutely calm?<\/p>\n

And I feel\u2014
\n\u201cI\u201d
\nis tight on me.
\nSomeone stubbornly pushes out of me.<\/p>\n

Hello!
\nWho\u2019s speaking?
\nMama?
\nMama!
\nYour son is beautifully sick!
\nMama!
\nHe has fire of the heart.
\nTell his sisters, Lyuda and Olya,\u2014
\nhe has nowhere to go.
\nEach word,
\neven a joke,
\nvomited from his scorching mouth,
\nleaps like a naked prostitute
\nfrom a burning brothel.<\/p>\n

People sniff\u2014
\nsmells of burnt flesh!
\nThey herded \u2019em.
\nShining ones!
\nIn helmets!
\nNo beetle-crushers!
\nTell the firemen:
\nClimb gently up the burning heart.
\nI myself.
\nI\u2019ll roll out my tearing eyes like barrels.
\nLet me lean against my ribs.
\nI\u2019ll leap out! Leap out! Leap out! Leap out!
\nThey crashed.
\nYou can\u2019t leap out of the heart!<\/p>\n

On the burning face
\nfrom a crack in the lips,
\nout popped a charred kisslet about to jump.<\/p>\n

Mama!
\nI can\u2019t sing.
\nIn the chapel of my heart the kliros<\/i>\u00a0is catching fire!<\/p>\n

The scorched figurines of words and numbers
\nfrom the skull,
\nlike children from a burning building.
\nThus, fear,
\nto seize heaven,
\nraised up
\nthe burning arms of the Lusitania<\/i>.
\nTo the trembling people
\nin the apartment quiet
\na hundred-eyed glow explodes from the harbor.
\nLast cry\u2014
\nmoan through centuries
\nthat I burn!<\/p>\n

(Translated by Jonathan Brent and Lyudmila Sholokhova<\/a>.\u00a0Read a full translation of Mayakovsky’s ‘A Cloud in Trousers’ in John Glad and Daniel Weissbort’s Russian Poetry: The Modern Period (University of Iowa Press, 1978):\u00a0Mayakovsky Cloud in Trousers<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

Meanwhile over in the United States, July 1915 saw the first issue of the new literary magazine Others<\/em>, subtitled ‘A Magazine of the New Verse’. The magazine was founded in New Jersey by Alfred Kreymborg, who had previously edited The Glebe<\/em> with Man Ray. Based for much of its run in New York, Others<\/em> offered an alternative space for modern poetry, often attracting writers whose work had either been rejected by or simply didn’t fit in Chicago’s Poetry<\/em> or The Little Review<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

A core of artists, emerging out of a colony established in Grantwood, came to gather round Others<\/em>. These included\u00a0William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Mina Loy, and Marcel Duchamp. Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Carl Sandburg were among their fellow contributors, as the magazine published twenty-seven issues until July 1919. Three anthologies appeared, in 1916, 1917, and 1920.<\/p>\n

The July 1915 issue featured poetry by Mary Carolyn Davies, Mina Loy, Orrick Johns, Horace Holley, and Kreymborg. Mina Loy’s contribution was four short ‘Love Songs’, which brought a hostile response from Amy Lowell and Conrad Aiken.<\/p>\n

‘Love Songs’, by Mina Loy (1915)<\/strong><\/p>\n

I<\/p>\n

Spawn of fantasies
\nSitting the appraisable
\nPig Cupid \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0his rosy snout
\nRooting erotic garbage
\n“Once upon a time”
\nPulls a weed \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0white star-topped
\nAmong wild oats sown in mucous membrane
\nI would \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0an eye in a Bengal light
\nEternity in a sky-rocket
\nConstellations in an ocean
\nWhose rivers run no fresher
\nThan a trickle of saliva<\/p>\n

There are suspect places<\/p>\n

I must live in my lantern
\nTrimming subliminal flicker
\nVirginal \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0to the bellows
\nOf experience
\n                              Colored glass.<\/p>\n

II<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 The skin-sack
\nIn which a wanton duality
\nPacked
\nAll the completions of my infructuous impulses
\nSomething the shape of a man
\nTo the casual vulgarity of the merely observant
\nMore of a clock-work mechanism
\nRunning down against time
\nTo which I am not paced
\n        My finger-tips are numb from fretting your hair
\nA God’s door-mat
\n        On the threshold of your mind.<\/p>\n

III<\/p>\n

We might have coupled
\nIn the bed-ridden monopoly of a moment
\nOr broken flesh with one another
\nAt the profane communion table
\nWhere wine is spilled on promiscuous lips<\/p>\n

We might have given birth to a butterfly
\nWith the daily news
\nPrinted in blood on its wings.<\/p>\n

IV<\/p>\n

Once in a mezzanino<\/em>
\nThe starry ceiling
\nVaulted an unimaginable family
\nBird-like abortions
\nWith human throats
\nAnd wisdom’s eyes
\nWho wore lamp-shade red dresses
\nAnd woolen hair<\/p>\n

One bore a baby
\nIn a padded porte-enfant<\/em>
\nTied with a sarsanet ribbon
\nTo her goose’s wings
\nBut for the abominable shadows
\nI would have lived
\nAmong their fearful furniture
\nTo teach them to tell me their secrets
\nFor I had guessed mine
\nThat if I should find YOU
\nAnd bring you with me
\nThe brood would be swept clean out.<\/p>\n

(Every issue of Others can be accessed via The Modernist Journals Project<\/a>, a collaboration between Brown University and the University of Tulsa. A PDF of the July 1915 edition can be downloaded here:\u00a0Others July 1915<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Bj\u00f6rk and Timothy Morton, Robyn & La Bagatelle Magique, and More of The Week’s Music\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

This week Dazed<\/em> published some of the correspondence between Bj\u00f6rk and the philosopher Timothy Morton<\/a>. This\u00a0appeared in full in the retrospective\u00a0Bj\u00f6rk: Archives<\/a><\/em>, which features critical texts, poetry, and photography, and was published by MoMA<\/a> and Thames & Hudson in March.<\/p>\n

Morton is the author of books including Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World\u00a0<\/i>(Minnesota, 2013),\u00a0The Ecological Thought<\/i> (Harvard, 2010), and the upcoming\u00a0Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence<\/i>. Introducing the series of twenty-four emails which appeared in Dazed<\/em><\/a>, Bj\u00f6rk wrote:<\/p>\n

‘last year i reached out to the philosopher timothy morton to see if he would be interested to start a dialogue with me, to search for a definition of me and my friends\u2019 stance in this world, which i felt his writing came very close to already. of course i\u2019m still searching but this email chat of ours got pretty close and we shared a couple of coordinates trying to define what \u201cism\u201d a pop musician from iceland would be …..’<\/em><\/p>\n

Here’s a reproduction of one of the early emails sent by\u00a0Bj\u00f6rk to Morton, with the introductions out of the way:<\/p>\n

\"1131382\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In other music-related stuff this week, Robyn announced the specifics of the upcoming\u00a0La Bagatelle Magique release. The group – comprising Robyn\u00a0alongside keyboardist Markus\u00a0J\u00e4gerstedt and the late producer Christian Falk – will put out a mini-album entitled Love Is Free<\/em> on 7 August, on Konichiwa Records,\u00a0and it is\u00a0available to pre-order now<\/a>. Meanwhile – with the album’s titular track shared\u00a0last month<\/a>\u00a0– Robyn also released the album’s second single, ‘Set Me Free’:<\/p>\n