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#modernism

2 posts2 participants0 posts today
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Jonathan Emmesedi

I've just finished Alfred Döblin's "Berlin Alexanderplatz". In spite of its reputation as a difficult book, it gripped me, and I can quite see why it sold well when it was first published in 1929. I was reminded of John Dos Passos' "Manhattan Transfer" and "USA' trilogy. Read it if you have any interest in modernism, modernity, cities, Berlin, crime, Weimar Germany, the world between the wars...don't read it if you can't deal with stomach churning scenes of violence against women.

My German is not and never will be anywhere good enough to deal with the original text, so I turned to the 1931 translation by Eugene Jolas. This version has been much criticised for its rendering of Berlin working class speech into the colloquial American English of the twenties, but that choice struck the right note with me. The Berlin of the twenties does seem to me much more like Chicago or New York than Paris or London - a city without centuries of history but bursting with the sounds of streetcars, boxing commentators, ads, wisecracks...the sounds of modernity. US English does seem to be the English of the twentieth century city.

I looked at the more recent and widely praised Michael Hofmann translation, which employs a vaguely cockney sounding English - perhaps I am being unfair, because I only read brief extracts, but I found myself thinking of Dick Van Dyke in "Mary Poppins"!

Although the novels that Döblin wrote before "Berlin Alexanderplatz" don't sound like my cup of tea, I would be interested to read his tetralogy "November 1918: A German Revolution". Is a good translation of those books available?

Image: Mario von Bucovich -- Berlin --Kaufhaus Tietz -- Alexanderplatz -- 1928 -- Wikimedia Commons - Public Domain

#AlfredDöblin#BerlinAlexanderplatz#Books
Public
Hotspur🏳️‍🌈🇺🇦

"Sunday Afternoon in the Country," Florine Stettheimer, 1917.

Stettheimer (1871-1944) was a Modernist painter and theatrical designer, as well as a pioneering feminist, poet, and salonniere.

While at first glance this seems rather mundane, the colors are strange; check out the red tree. Some of the characters seem to be doing bizarre, random things, and some appear to be sitting in upholstered armchairs.

In reality, this is her memory of a picnic she held; in the upper right, hardly visible, she paints herself working at her easel. In the lower left, photographer Edward Steichen points his camera at Dada founder Marcel Duchamp. leaning on a table, while Ettie Stettheimer (the artist's sister) stands behind him in the red coat. Other real-life people are depicted, but in a strange style reminiscent of Chagall.

Stettheimer refused to identify with any group or school; her work is Modernist by default for the time she worked in and her style. Not taken seriously in her liftetime, her work was donated to museums and rediscovered in the 1990s, and now she is hailed as a great American artist.

From the Cleveland Museum of Art.

A Modernist painting. We see a scene set in a garden of sorts, but it's dominated by shades of pink and red, with some pale green. The garden is holding what appears to be a picnic of sorts, but it's populated by figures doing odd things. In the center, a man faces away while a girl beside him turns back. Lower left, a photographer aims a camera at a man leaning on a table. Lower right, two women sit in upholstered armchairs. Middle left, a purple blanket is a surface for a drummer and a green figure with a yellow parasol. Upper left, a woman sits under a red/pink tree while a man does a handstand; on the right, a woman leans face-first into a green tree, and almost invisible figure of a woman works at a painting on her easel.
#Art#FlorineStettheimer#Modernism
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Assoc for Scottish Literature

“[Davidson] makes the case for those in the depth of hardship by the depiction of an ordinary husband and wife, suffering inescapably, but maintaining a grip on their powers of resilience and love.”

—Carol Rumens on John Davidson’s “Villanelle” – “A still potent vision of a Glasgow family in poverty at the end of the 19th century, clinging on to hope.”

3/3

theguardian.com/books/2024/dec

The Guardian · Poem of the week: Villanelle by John DavidsonBy Carol Rumens
#Scottish#literature#poetry
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Assoc for Scottish Literature

“As a condition-of-England poem, ‘A Northern Suburb’ rings bells louder than a Royal wedding, even today.”

John Davidson grew up in Greenock, a son of the manse – although he soon rebelled against his father’s religious beliefs. A prolific writer, he influenced many Modernist poets such as WB Yeats, Wallace Stevens, TS Eliot & Hugh MacDiarmid

2/3

theguardian.com/books/booksblo

The Guardian · Poem of the week: A Northern Suburb by John DavidsonBy Carol Rumens
#Scottish#literature#poetry
Public
Assoc for Scottish Literature

I couldn’t touch a stop and turn a screw,
And set the blooming world a-work for me,
Like such as cut their teeth—I hope, like you—
On the handle of a skeleton gold key…

—“Thirty Bob a Week”, by the 19th-century poet, playwright & novelist John Davidson (1857–1909) – born #OTD, 11 April. A 🎂 🧵

1/3

Page images from THE YELLOW BOOK vol. 2, 1894 – available on @gutenberg_org

gutenberg.org/files/41876/4187

John Davidson Thirty Bob a Week I couldn’t touch a stop and turn a screw, And set the blooming world a-work for me, Like such as cut their teeth—I hope, like you— On the handle of a skeleton gold key. I cut mine on a leek, which I eat it every week: I’m a clerk at thirty bob as you can see. But I don’t allow it’s luck and all a toss; There’s no such thing as being starred and crossed; It’s just the power of some to be a boss, And the bally power of others to be bossed: I face the music, sir; you bet I ain’t a cur! Strike me lucky if I don’t believe I’m lost! For like a mole I journey in the dark, A-travelling along the underground From my Pillar’d Halls and broad suburban Park To come the daily dull official round; And home again at night with my pipe all alight A-scheming how to count ten bob a pound.
And it’s often very cold and very wet; And my missis stitches towels for a hunks; And the Pillar’d Halls is half of it to let— Three rooms about the size of travelling trunks. And we cough, my wife and I, to dislocate a sigh, When the noisy little kids are in their bunks. But you never hear her do a growl or whine, For she’s made of flint and roses, very odd; And I’ve got to cut my meaning rather fine Or I’d blubber, for I’m made of greens and sod: So p’rhaps we are in hell for all that I can tell, And lost and damn’d and served up hot to God. I ain’t blaspheming, Mr. Silvertongue; I’m saying things a bit beyond your art: Of all the rummy starts you ever sprung Thirty bob a week’s the rummiest start! With your science and your books and your the’ries about spooks, Did you ever hear of looking in your heart? I didn’t mean your pocket, Mr., no! I mean that having children and a wife, With thirty bob on which to come and go, Isn’t dancing to the tabor and the fife; When it doesn’t make you drink, by Heaven! it makes you think, And notice curious items about life. I step into my heart and there I meet A god-almighty devil singing small,
Who would like to shout and whistle in the street, And squelch the passers flat against the wall; If the whole world was a cake he had the power to take, He would take it, ask for more, and eat them all. And I meet a sort of simpleton beside— The kind that life is always giving beans; With thirty bob a week to keep a bride He fell in love and married in his teens; At thirty bob he stuck, but he knows it isn’t luck; He knows the seas are deeper than tureens. And the god-almighty devil and the fool That meet me in the High Street on the strike, When I walk about my heart a-gathering wool, Are my good and evil angels if you like; And both of them together in every kind of weather Ride me like a double-seated “bike”. That’s rough a bit and needs its meaning curled; But I have a high old hot un in my mind, A most engrugious notion of the world That leaves your lightning ’rithmetic behind: I give it at a glance when I say “There ain’t no chance, Nor nothing of the lucky-lottery kind.” And it’s this way that I make it out to be: No fathers, mothers, countries, climates—none!— Not Adam was responsible for me; Nor society, nor systems, nary one! A little sleeping seed, I woke—I did, indeed— A million years before the blooming sun.
I woke because I thought the time had come; Beyond my will there was no other cause: And everywhere I found myself at home Because I chose to be the thing I was; And in whatever shape, of mollusc, or of ape, I always went according to the laws. I was the love that chose my mother out; I joined two lives and from the union burst; My weakness and my strength without a doubt Are mine alone for ever from the first. It’s just the very same with a difference in the name As “Thy will be done.” You say it if you durst! They say it daily up and down the land As easy as you take a drink, it’s true; But the difficultest go to understand, And the difficultest job a man can do, Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week, And feel that that’s the proper thing for you. It’s a naked child against a hungry wolf; It’s playing bowls upon a splitting wreck; It’s walking on a string across a gulf With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck: But the thing is daily done by many and many a one . . . And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.
#Scottish#literature#poetry
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Public
Assoc for Scottish Literature

@litstudies

“By the time [Willa Muir] met Edwin at a mutual friend’s house in Glasgow, she was a lecturer in English, psychology and education and vice-principal of Gipsy Hill Teacher Training College in London…”

Robert Crawford Robert Crawford reviews Margery Palmer McCulloch’s Edwin & Willa Muir: A Literary Marriage, & Willa Muir’s The Usurpers, in the London Review of Books

5/5

lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n18/ro

London Review of Books · Robert Crawford · Peerie Breeks: Willa and Edwin Muir‘I am a better translator than he is,’ Willa Muir complained in a 1953 journal. For several generations the couple...
#Scottish#literature#modernism
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Public
Assoc for Scottish Literature

@litstudies

“The sociological insights of ‘Mrs Muttoe and the Top Storey’ are sharpened by their relevance to Britain’s pandemic response… Muir’s novel matches what current social scientists describe as ‘role overload’ in the ‘role strain theory’.”

—Re-Evaluating Willa Muir’s ‘Mrs Muttoe & the Top Storey’ in Light of COVID-19 Labour Disparities
Emily Pickard, SCOTTISH LITERRY REVIEW 14/1 (2022)

4/5

muse.jhu.edu/pub/243/article/8

muse.jhu.eduProject MUSE - Re-Evaluating Willa Muir’s ‘Mrs Muttoe and the Top Storey’ in Light of COVID-19 Labour Disparities
#Scottish#literature#modernism
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Public
Assoc for Scottish Literature

@litstudies

“Most of the translation, especially Kafka, has been done by ME. Edwin only helped. And every time Edwin was referred to as THE translator, I was too proud to say anything; […] I am left without a shred of literary reputation”
—Willa Muir

Listen to the Dead Ladies Show podcast on Willa Muir

3/5

deadladiesshow.com/2020/06/17/

The Dead Ladies Show · Podcast #34: Willa MuirIn Episode 34, we’re once more in Muenster as guests of the Burg Hülshoff Centre for Literature, which happens to be named after a Dead Lady poet, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff! This time around, we’…
#Scottish#literature#modernism
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Assoc for Scottish Literature

@litstudies

“Willa Muir […] is one of these ‘dangerous women’ whose courage, intelligence and imagination helped redefine women’s place in a changing society”
—Margery Palmer McCulloch on Willa Muir, for the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities’ “Dangerous Women” project

2/5

dangerouswomenproject.org/2016

#Scottish#literature#modernism
Public
Assoc for Scottish Literature

“Had a fit of the scunners: heart withered up.”
—Willa Muir (1890–1970) was born #OTD, 13 March. Her translations of Kafka solidified his reputation in English, & then internationally

In this article, Prof Michelle Woods looks at Willa Muir—a Shetland translator in Prague

@litstudies

1/5

thebottleimp.org.uk/2020/12/wi

The Bottle Imp · Willa Muir: a Shetland Translator in Prague - The Bottle ImpIn her archive at St Andrew’s, Willa Muir stored a clipping from The Scotsman, dated 24 May, 1947. “It was something of a shock, writes a colleague from Prague, to hear a Czech choir singing Ho Ro, mo Nighean Donn Bhoidheach – to say nothing of ‘Ca’ the Yowes tae the Knowes’ and other Scots […]
#Scottish#literature#modernism
Public
Trevor

New project! I've been wanting to try concrete sculpture for a while - there are some incredible artists doing miniature brutalist objects that I'm enamoured with, but it wasn't until this recent surge of pride in the Canadian identity that I finally decided what to make. Based on Stuart Ash's design for the Centennial Commission's logo from 1965, I've retained the 11 equilateral triangles but removed the stem, and have added some depth to the design. The goal is to have the design shift and change as lighting conditions change, but always retain the shape of the leaf. This will be 3D printed, then I'll make a silicone mold, and finally I'll cast in in concrete. It's printing now; can't wait to see how it looks as a test.
#OhCanada #Canada #3Dprinting #concrete #Brutalism #art #sculpture #modernism
canadamodern.org/centennial-sy

A render of the Centennial leaf with a concrete texture applied. 11 equilateral triangles, 6 arranged in a hexagon with 5 serving as points, evoke a maple leaf in a modernist style. The light & shadow playing on insets in the triangles make the identical sections each unique.
The leaf as displayed in the slicing software, showing later lines.
The original design of the leaf as used in the Centennial celebrations of 1967.
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Public
Assoc for Scottish Literature

SUNSET SONG

Currently on the iPlayer: the digitally restored 1971 BBC adaptation of the first part of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s SCOTS QUAIR trilogy about a young girl’s intellectual & sexual development in rural north-east Scotland just before WW1

7/9

bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m00

BBC iPlayerSunset SongThe first part of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Scots Quair trilogy about a young girl's intellectual and sexual development within a repressive peasant community in Scotland just before the First World War.
#Scottish#literature#modernism
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