(no subject)
Oct. 17th, 2009 08:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionThe second Popa-shock came from this one:
The Tale of a Tale, tr. Charles Simic
Once upon a time there was a tale
It came to the end
Before its beginning
And began
After its end
Its heroes entered it
After their death
And left it
Before their birth
Its heroes spoke
Of an earth of a heaven
They spoke a lot
Only they didn't say
What even they didn't know
That they were heroes in a tale
In a tale coming to the end
Before its beginning
And beginning
After its end.
Ridiculously close to Little, Big, and closer still to how Crowley speaks about it, isn't it? Oddly similar to the relationship this Novalis poem, tr. Bly, I posted a while back bears to The Solitudes:
When geometric diagrams and digits
Are no longer the keys to living things,
When people who go about singing or kissing
Know deeper things than the great scholars,
When society is returned once more
To unimprisoned life, and to the universe,
And when light and darkness mate
Once more and make something entirely transparent,
And people see in poems and fairy tales
The true history of the world,
Then our entire twisted nature will turn
And run when a single secret word is spoken.
Combine these Popa poems, and it may mean Crowley saw what I saw in Kepler. And perhaps it's also more or less what I saw in Crowley (wasn't Kepler's pointing the self-consciously littlest biggest thing possible? I'll have to reread the meadow scene soon). And if Popa saw all this too, I think I'd like to see more Popa. We could point back and forth among heads.
And (a tale for another day) I think coming from The Selfish Gene is the best way in which one can start to understand Little, Big--and perhaps, with Another Republic, it was one of John Crowley's starting points writing it.
The Tale of a Tale, tr. Charles Simic
Once upon a time there was a tale
It came to the end
Before its beginning
And began
After its end
Its heroes entered it
After their death
And left it
Before their birth
Its heroes spoke
Of an earth of a heaven
They spoke a lot
Only they didn't say
What even they didn't know
That they were heroes in a tale
In a tale coming to the end
Before its beginning
And beginning
After its end.
Ridiculously close to Little, Big, and closer still to how Crowley speaks about it, isn't it? Oddly similar to the relationship this Novalis poem, tr. Bly, I posted a while back bears to The Solitudes:
When geometric diagrams and digits
Are no longer the keys to living things,
When people who go about singing or kissing
Know deeper things than the great scholars,
When society is returned once more
To unimprisoned life, and to the universe,
And when light and darkness mate
Once more and make something entirely transparent,
And people see in poems and fairy tales
The true history of the world,
Then our entire twisted nature will turn
And run when a single secret word is spoken.
Combine these Popa poems, and it may mean Crowley saw what I saw in Kepler. And perhaps it's also more or less what I saw in Crowley (wasn't Kepler's pointing the self-consciously littlest biggest thing possible? I'll have to reread the meadow scene soon). And if Popa saw all this too, I think I'd like to see more Popa. We could point back and forth among heads.
And (a tale for another day) I think coming from The Selfish Gene is the best way in which one can start to understand Little, Big--and perhaps, with Another Republic, it was one of John Crowley's starting points writing it.
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-22 06:40 pm (UTC)Has Bloom ever written more than a blurb about him?
no subject
Date: 2009-10-22 09:03 pm (UTC)However, he's written a 20-30 page piece for the upcoming 25th Anniversary Edition of Little, Big, discussing it and Aegypt at length and allegedly expressing his failure to get Engine Summer. We're almost at the 29th anniversary of L,B, though, so it may be a long wait.