Damrosch, David; Djelal Kadir; Ursula K. Heise; Sabry Hafez; Pauline Yu;
The Longman Anthology of World Literature volume F: The Twentieth century
Longman, 2004, 1158 pages
ISBN 0321055365
topics: | literature | poetry | fiction | drama | anthology | world | modern | 20th-c
A formative voice in modern Turkish poetry. Contrary to the rhymed
stylization of traditional turkish poetry, he introduced free verse
and colloquial diction. As a communist, he was subject to persecution
both under allied occupation (till 1922), and also in Kamal Atarurk's
newly liberated Turkey, where the communist party was banned. He
would be repeatedly arrested. In 1938 (in the last year of Ataturk's
presidency) he was arrested for inciting rebellion in the Turkish
army. The charges were that his 1935 long poem, "The Epic of Sheik
Bedrettin." about a 15th c. peasant rebellion against Ottoman rule,
was subversive and were corrupting military cadets. He was sentenced
to twenty-eight years.
His friend Pablo Neruda relates Hikmet's account of how he was treated
after his arrest:
Accused of attempting to incite the Turkish navy into rebellion,
Nazim was condemned to the punishments of hell. The trial was
held on a warship. He told me he was foced to walk on the ship's
bridge until he was too weak to stay on his feet, then they stuck
him into a section of the latrines where the excrement rose half
a meter above the floor. My brother poet felt his strength
failing him: my tormentors are keeping an eye on me, they want to
watch me suffer. His strength came back with pride. He began to
sing, low at first, then louder, and finally at the top of his
lungs. He sang all the songs, all the love poems he could
remeber, his own poems, the ballads of the peasants, the people's
battle hymns. He sang everything he knew. And so he vanquished
the filth and his torturers.
He spent much of his adult life in prison. A change in government
after elections in 1950 enabled his amnesty. A year later, after two
attempts on his life, he escaped to the Soviet Union, where he died
in 1963.
He never got the wide international recognition in his life (he won
Russia's International Peace Prize). But today, one of the leading
trans. Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk composed 1928 to the memory of my friend SI-YA-U, whose head was cut off in Shanghai
Renowned Leonardo's world-famous "La Gioconda" has disappeared. And in the space vacated by the fugitive a copy has been placed. The poet inscribing the present treatise knows more than a little about the fate of the real Gioconda. She fell in love with a seductive graceful youth: a honey-tongued almond-eyed Chinese named SI-YA-U. Gioconda ran off after her lover; Gioconda was burned in a Chinese city. I, Nazim Hikmet, authority on this matter, thumbing my nose at friend and foe five times a day, undaunted, claim I can prove it; if I can't, I'll be ruined and banished forever from the realm of poesy. [...] [Si-Ya-U is the chinese intellectual hsiao san (b. 1896), who became friends with hikmet in Moscow in 1922. in 1928, hikmet heard taht Si-Ya-U had been executed in Shanghai a year back during the bloody crackdown by chiang kai-shek's forces. at the same time, the gioconda (mona lisa) was stolen from the louvre. this incident gave hikmet the impetus for this modernist poem that describes a long interaction between golconda and si-ya-u, with excerpts from golconda's diary (she's getting bored in the louvre, and writes: Today I saw a Chinese: he was nothing like those Chinese with their topknots. How long he gazed at me! and they begin to talk in "the language of the eyes" and eventually fall in love, and she leaves the louvre to travel with him to shanghai, but encounter tragedy - si-ya-u is executed: Like a yellow sun drenched in blood SI-YA-U's head rolled at her feet... and in the end, she is also sentenced to death by burning... the poem (?story?) is a bit over-dramatized in parts, but the structure is innovative and holds interest. it was written in 1928-29 while hikmet was in russia. in the event it turned out that hsiao san was actually alive and they were to meet again in 1951.
[Senegal. was president of Senegal from independence in 1960-1980 French title: Femme nue, femme noire, tr. John Reed & Clive Wake] p. 641 Nude woman, black woman Clothed in your color which is life itself, in your form which is beauty! I grew in your shadow, and the softness of your hands covered my eyes. Then, in the heat of the Summer and Noon, suddenly I discover you, Promised Land, from the top of a high parched hill And your beauty strikes me to the heart, like the flash of an eagle. Nude woman, dark woman Ripe fruit firm of flesh, somber ecstasies of black wine, mouth that moves my mouth to poetry Prairie of pure horizons, prairie trembling in the East wind’s passionate caress Tom-tom taut over sculptured frame, groaning beneath the Conqueror’s fingers Your deep contralto voice is the sacred melody of the Beloved. Nude woman, dark woman Oil not ruffled by the slightest breath, oil smooth on the athlete’s flanks, the flanks of the princes of Mali Heaven-limbed gazelle, the moist drops are stars on the night of your skin In the dark shadow of your hair, my anguish brightens with the dawning sun of your eyes. Nude woman, black woman I sing your disappearing beauty, fixing it in an Eternal shape, Before an envious Destiny transforms you into ashes to nourish the roots of life. original opening lines: Femme nue, femme noire Vétue de ta couleur qui est vie, de ta forme qui est beauté J'ai grandi à ton ombre; la douceur de tes mains bandait mes yeux
[australian aborigine poet, p.714] They came in to the little town A semi-naked band subdued and silent All that remained of their tribe. They came here to the place of their old bora ground Where now the many white men hurry about like ants. Notice of the estate agent reads: 'Rubbish May Be Tipped Here'. Now it half covers the traces of the old bora ring. "We are as strangers here now, but the white tribe are the strangers. We belong here, we are of the old ways. We are the corroboree and the bora ground, We are the old ceremonies, the laws of the elders. We are the wonder tales of Dream Time, the tribal legends told. We are the past, the hunts and the laughing games, the wandering camp fires. We are the lightening bolt over Gaphembah Hill Quick and terrible, And the Thunderer after him, that loud fellow. We are the quiet daybreak paling the dark lagoon. We are the shadow-ghosts creeping back as the camp fires burn low. We are nature and the past, all the old ways Gone now and scattered. The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter. The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place. The bora ring is gone. The corroboree is gone. And we are going." [bora ground or bora ring]: site of the bora, or initiation ceremony, marking a youth's entry into manhood. [dream time]: primordial time when worl dwas created
Nicaraguan poet, b. Metapa Nicaragua (now renamed Ciudad Dario). Fiercely modernist. p. 856-860
(tr. Alberto Acerada and Will Derusha; I include in my comments alternate
versions (marked CM) from a translation by G. Dundas Craig, revised by
Douglas Messerli]
It would take a voice from the Bible or a verse from Walt Whitman
to get through to you, Hunter!
Primitive and modern, simple and complicated,
one part Washington and four parts Nimrod!
You're the United States,
You're the future invader
Of the guileless America of indigenous blood,
that still prays to Jesus Christ and still speaks Spanish.
You're a strong and splendid specimen of your kind;
you're Cultured, you're skillful, you're the opposite of Tolstoy.
And breaking horese or slaying tigers
you're an Alexander-Nebuchandenezzar.
(You're a Professor of Energy,
as the madmen of today put it.) [CM: As fools say nowadays]
You think that life is a conflagration,
and progress is an eruption;
that where you put your bullet
you set the future.
No.
The United States is powerful and big.
When it shudders, a deep earthquake
runs down the enormous vertebrae of the Andes
Once Hugo said to Grant: "The stars are yours."
(The Argentine sun, now dawning, has hardly begun to shine,
and the Chilean star is rising...) You're rich.
You combine the worship of Hercules with the worship of Mammon;
and lighting the way for easy conquest,
Liberty raises her torch in New York. [CM: rears her torch above New York]
Yet this America of ours, which has had poets
since the olden days of Netzahualgoyotl,
which preserves the footprints of great Bacchus
which once learned the Panic alphabet, [greek fertility deity]
which consulted the stars, which knew the Atlantis
whose name comes down to us loud and clear in Plato,
which from the first moments of life, so long ago,
has lived on light, on fire, on perfume, on love,
the America of the great Montezuma, of the Inca,
the fragrant America of Christopher Columbus,
Catholic America, Spanish America,
[CM: Fragrant still with the memory of Columbus,
America Catholic, America Spanish,
.o9% the America where the noble Cuauhtemoc said:
"This is no bed of roses"; that America
which shakes with hurricanes and lives on love;
men with Saxon eyes and barbarous souls, it lives.
[who is addressed is unclear, CM has: O men of saxon eyes...]
And dreams. And loves, and quivers, and is the daughter of the Sun.
Beware, Spanish America lives!
There are a thousand cubs let loose from the Spanish Lion.
For God's sake, one would need to be, Roosevelt,
a terrifying Sharpshooter and a mighty Hunter
to hold us in your ferrous claws. [CM: iron grasp]
And even accounting for everything, you lack one thing, God!
[CM: Everything is yours, you think: but you still lack — God!]
* Craig / Musserli version
---
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Illustration, Umberto Boccioni, unique Forms of Continuity in Space
Gustav Klimt, The Kiss
Belgian mining magnate and African chauffeur, Congo Free State
Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d' Avignon
Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory (Soft Watches)
Georgia O'Keefe, Cow's Skull with Calico Roses
A poster of Mao Zedong
Bhupen Khakhar, Ghost City Night
Frank Gebry, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain
Illustration, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Echo of a Scream 3
The World in 1900 4
The World in 2000 6
Illustration, Global shrinkage: The effect of changing transport
technologies on ``real'' distance 11
Timeline 16
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti 1876-1944 (Italy) The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism (1909) (trans. J.C. Taylor) Tristan Tzara (Rumania) (1896-1963) Dada — Unpretentious Proclamation (1919) (trans. B. Wright) André Breton (1896-1966) The Surrealist Manifesto (trans. P. Waldberg and M. Nadeau) Mina Loy (1882-1966) Feminist Manifesto (1914) Yokomitsu Riichi (1898-1947) Sensation and New Sensation (1925) (trans. D. Keene) Oswald de Andrade (Brazil) (1890-1954) Cannibalist Manifesto (1928), tr. Leslie Bary. André Breton (1896-1966), Leon Trotsky (1879-1940), Diego Rivera (1886-1957) Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art (1938) tr. Dwight MacDonald. Hu Shi (China) (1891-1962) Some Modest Proposals for the Reform of Literature (trans. K.A. Denton)
Illustration. Sir H. M. Stanley's Three African Journeys
Preface to The Nigger of the ``Narcissus'' 58 (3)
Heart of Darkness (1899) 61 (60)
Resonances
Joseph Conrad: from Congo Diary 115 (62)
Sir Henry Morton Stanley: from Address of the Manchester Chamber of
Commerce 117
PREMCHAND (South Asia) (1880-1936) 121 (6)
My Big Brother (trans. David Rubin) 122 (5)
LU'XUN (1881-1936) 127 (12)
Preface to A Call to Arms (trans. Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang)
A Madman's Diary 131 (7)
A Small Incident 138 (1)
JAMES JOYCE (1882-1941) 139 (33)
Dubliners 142 (30)
Araby 142 (4)
Clay 145
The Dead
VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1941)
Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street
The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection
from A Room of One's Own
AKUTAGAWA RYUNOSUKE (1892-1927)
Rashomon (trans. T. Kojima)
In a Grove (trans. Seiki M. Lippit)
A Note Forwarded to a Certain old Friend (trans. A. Inoue)
T. S. ELIOT (1888-1965) 225
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
The Waste Land
CONSTANTINE CAVAFY (1863-1933) 241
Days of 1908 (trans. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)
Ithaka
CLAUDE MCKAY (1890-1948) 243
The Tropics in New Your
Flame-Heart
Outcast
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA (1898-1936) 245 (2)
Unsleeping City (trans. Ben Belitt)
CARLOS DRUMMOND DE ANDRADE (1902-1987) 247
In the Middle of the Road (tr. Elizabeth Bishop)
EMILE HABIBY (1922-1998) 248 (9)
from the Secret Life of Saeed, the Ill-Fated Pessoptimist
(trans. Salma Jayyusi and Trevor LeGassick)
OCTAVLO PAZ (1914-1998) 254
A Wind Called Bob Rauschenberg (trans. Eliot Weinberger) 254 (1)
Central Park 256 (1)
The Metamorphosis (trans. Stanley
Corngold)
Parables
The Trees (trans. J.A. Underwood)
The Next Village (trans. Willa and Edwin Muir)
The Cares of a Family Man (trans. Willa and Edwin Muir)
Give It Up! (trnia. Tania and James Stern)
On Parables (trans. Willa and Edwin Muir)
The Muse (trans. Judith Hemschemeyer) I am not with those (trans. Judith Hemschemeyer) Boris Pasternak (trans. Richard McKane) Why is this century worse (trans. Richard McKane) Requiem (trans. Judith Hemschemeyer) [Resonances: see below: Osip Mandelstam: To A.A.A. (Akhmatova)]
VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKI (1893-1930)
Listen!, tr. Dorian Rottenberg
Fed Up, tr. Dorian Rottenberg
Ode to the Revolution, tr. Dorian Rottenberg
On Trash, tr. Herbert Marshall
BORIS PASTERNAK (1890-1960)
O Had I Known..., tr. Lydia Pasternak Slater
On Early Trains, tr. George Reavey
Hamlet, tr. Lydia Pasternak Slater
ANDREI BELY (1880-1934) 309
From The Magic of Words, tr. T.G. West
MARINA TZVETAEVA (1892-1941)
The Poet, tr. Elaine Feinstein
Readers of Newspapers
OSIP MANDELSTAM (1891-1938) 315
To A.A.A. (Akhmatova), tr. Bernard Meares
We live, not feeling ..., tr. Albert C. Todd
By denying me the seas, tr. Bernard Meares 317
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Who Goes with Fergus?
No Second Troy
The Wild Swans at Coole
Easter 1916
Resonance: Proclamation of the Irish Republic 322
The Second Coming
Sailing to Byzantium
Byzantium
Under Ben Bulben
The Panther, tr. Walter Arndt
Duino Elegies, tr. J.B. Leishman and Stephen Spender
The First Elegy ("Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic")
The Second Elegy ("Every Angel is terrible. Still, though, alas!")
The Fourth Elegy ("O trees of life, when will your winter come?")
Sonnets to Orpheus tr. J.B. Leishman
1.1 A tree ascending there. O pure transcension! 336
1.2 And almost maiden-like was what drew near 336
1.3 A god can do it. But can a man expect 337
1.4 Rise no commemorating stone. The roses 337
EZRA POUND (1885-1972)
A Pact
EUGENIO MONTALE (1896-1981) (trans. William Arrowsmith)
Rhymes
Poetry
FERNANDO PESSOA (1888-1935) (trans. Edwin Honing)
Autopsychography
This
Today I read nearly two pages
The ancients used to invoke (trans. Jonathan Griffin)
PABLO NERUDA (1904-1973)
Tonight I can write the saddest lines (trans. W. S. Merwin)
Ars Poetica (trans. Nathaniel Tarm)
WALLACE STEVENS (1879-1955)
Anecdote of the Jar
Of Modern Poetry
Of Mere Being
NAZIM HIKMET (1902-1963)
Regarding Art (trans. Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk)
BEI DAO (b. 1949)
He Opens Wide a Third Eye...(trans. Bonnie S. McDougall and Chen Maiping)
Old Snow
DANIEL DAVID MOSES (b. 1952)
The Line
Illustration M. C. Escher, Drawing Hands 353
Map. Holy Roman Empire, (1648) 356
Mother Courage and Her Children (trans. Ralph Manheim)
The Two Flags, tr. Raymond Rosenthal
From Survival in Auschwitz, tr. Stuart Woolf
Map. European Theater, World War II 418
Map. Pacific Theater, World War II 420
YOSANO AKIKO (1878-1942)
I Beg You, Brother: Do Not Die (trans. Jay Rubin)
RUPERT BROOKE (1887-1915)
Peace
The Soldier
WILFRED OWEN (1893-1918)
Anthem for Doomed Youth
Strange Meeting
Dulce et Decorum Est
MISHIMA YUKIO (1925-1970)
Patriotism (Yukoku trans. Geoffrey Sargeant)
from The Temple of Dawn, tr. E. Dale Saunders & Celin Segawa Seigle
PRIMO LEVI (1919-1987)
The Two Flags (trans. Raymond Rosenthal)
Illustration. Pablo Picasso, Guernica
PAUL CELAN (1920-1970)
Death Fugue (trans. Joachim Neugroschel)
ZBIGNIEW HERBERT (1924-1998)
Report from the Besieged City (trans. John and Bogdana Carpenter)
ALEJO CARPENTIER (1904-1980)
Like the Night (trans. F. Partridge)
NAZIM HIKMET (1902-1963)
Gioconda and SI-YA-U (trans. Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk)
INGEBORG BACHMANN (1926-1973)
Youth in an Austrian Town (trans. Michael Bullock)
YEHUDA AMICHAI (1924-2000)
Seven Laments for the War-Dead (Trans. Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell)
Little Ruth (trans. Barbara and Benjamin Harsbav)
Endgame
CESAR VALLEJO (1892-1938) Agape (trans. Richard Schaaf and Kathleen Ross) Our Daily Bread (trans. Richard Schaaf and Kathleen Ross) Good Sense (trnas. Clayton Eshleman and Jose Rubia Barcia) Black Stone on a White Stone (trans. Clayton Eshleman and Jose Rubia Barcia) VLADIMIR NABOKOV (1899-1977) An Evening of Russian Poetry CZESLAW MILOSZ (1911-2004) Child of Europe (trans. Jan Darowski) Encounter (trans. Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallu) Dedication (trans. Czeslaw Milosz) Fear-Dream (trans. Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass) V. S. NAIPAUL (b. 1932) from Prologue to an Autobiography ADONIS (ALI AHMAD SA'ID) (b. 1930) A Mirror for Khalida (trans. Samuel Hazo)
The Garden of Forking Paths (trans. Andrew Hurley)
The Library of Babel (trans. Andrew Hurley)
Borges and I (trans. Andre2 Hurley)
The Cult of the Phoenix (trans. Andrew Hurley)
The Web (trans. Alistair Reid) 545
Resonance:
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: I Sell My Dreams (trans. Edith Grossman)
NAGUIB MAHFOUZ (1911-2006) 549
Zaabalawi (trans. Denys Johnson-Davies)
Hanzal and the Policeman, tr. AKararah and D. Kirkhaus 559
The Harafish, tr. Catherine Cobham
The Thief Who Stole the Melody
The Arabian Nights and Days (trans. Denys Johnson-Davies)
Shahriyar
Shahrzad
The Sheikh
The Care of the Emirs
Sanaan al-Gamali
GUNELI GUN (b. 1944)
from The Road Baghdad
JOHN BARTH (b. 1930)
Dunyazadiad
ITALO CALVINO (1923-1985)
from Invisible Cities (trans. William Weaver)
ASSIA DJEBAR (b. 1936)
from A Sister to Sheherazade (trans. Dorothy Blair)
Letter to a Poet (trans. Melvin Dixon)
Nocturne (She Flies she Flies) (trans. John Reed and Clive Wake)
Black Woman (trans, Norman R. Shapiro)
To New Your (trans, Melvin Dixon)
Correspondence (trans, Melvin Dixon)
Notebook of a Return to the Native Land
(trans. Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith)
Encounter on the Seine: Black Meets Brown
Sonny's Blues
Ice Tricksters
Shadows
Illustration, David P. Bradley, The Sante Fe Collector
OODGEROO OF THE TRIBE NOONUCCAL (1920-1993)
We Are Going
ARCHIE WELLER (b. 1957) (Aboriginal Australian)
Going Home
Paula Gunn Allen (b. 1939) (Laguna Pueblo/Sioux)
Pocahontas to Her English Husband, John Rolfe
Taking A Visitor to See the Ruins
LESLIE MARMON SILKO (b. 1948) (Laguna Pueblo/Hispanic/Anglo-American)
From The Storyteller
N. SCOTT MOMADAY (b. 1934) (Kiowa/Scot/French/Cherokee)
from The Way to Rainy Mountain
LOUISE ERDRICH (1954) (Chippewa/French/German)
Dear John Wayne
Illustration Grey Cohoe. Battle of the Butterflies at Tocito
IBRAHIM AL-KUNI (b. 1948) (Tuareg)
The Golden Bird of Misfortune (trans, Denys Johnson-Davies)
Stale Mates
Breast-Giver (trans, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak)
Illustration Ulrike Rosenbach, To Have No Power Is to Have Power
CLARICE LISPECTOR (1925-1977)
Preciousness (trans. Govanni Pontier)
FATIMA MERNISSI (b. 1940)
The Harem Within
AMA ATA AIDOO (b. 1942)
No Sweetness Here
HANAN AL-SHAYKH (b. 1945)
A Season of Madness (trans. Catherine Cobbam)
Illustration Louise Bourgeois. Femme Couteau )(``Knife Woman'')
JUAN GOYTISOLO (b. 1931)
from Makbara (trans, Helen Lane)
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ (b. 1928)
Artificial Roses (trans J. S. Bernstein0
JAMAICA KINCAID (b. 1949)
My Mother
So Long a Letter, tr. Modupé Bodé-Thomas (1979)
Map. Nigeria, c. 1885
Things Fall Apart
from The African Writer and the English Language
Resonances
Ngugi wa Thiong'o: from The Language of African Literature
Mbwil a M. Ngal: from Giambatista Viko; or The Rape of African Discourse
(trans David Damrosch)
Jeremy Cronin: To Learn how to speak... 969
Death and the King's Horseman
Illustration. Obiora Udechukwu, Silent Faces at Crossroads
NADINE GORDIMER (b. 1923)
The Defeated
FADWA TUQAN (1917-2003)
In the Aging City (trans. Patricia Alanah Byrne and Naomi Shihab Nye)
In the Flux
Face Lost in the Wildernes
MAHMOUD DARWISH (b. 1941) 1035
A Poem Which Is Not Green, from My Country
(trans. Jan Wedde and Fawwaz Tuqan)
Diary of a Palestinian Wound (trans. Ian Wedde and Fawwaz Tuqan)
Sirhan Drinks His Coffee in the Cafeteria (trans. Rana Kabbani)
Birds Die in Galilee
Resonance:
Agha Shahid Ali: Ghazal
FAIZ AHMAD FAIZ (1911-1984) 1045
Blackout (trans. Naomi Lazard)
No Sign of Blood
Solitary Confinement
REZA BARAHENI (b. 1935) 1048
The Unrecognized
Answers to an Interrogation
FAROUGH FAROGHZAD (1935-1967) 1050
A Poem for you (trans. Jascha Kessler)
DEREK WALCOTT (b. 1930) 1052
A Far Cry from Africa
Volcano
The Fortunate Traveller 1055
SALMAN RUSHDIE (b. 1947) 1060
Chekov and Zulu
MARIO VARGAS LLOSA (b. 1936)
from The Storyteller (trans. Helen Lane)
CHRISTA WOLF (b. 1929)
from Accident: A Day's News (trans. Heike Schwarzbauer and Rick Takvorian)
ABDELRAHMAN MUNIF (1933-2004)
from Cities of Salt (trans. Peter Theroux)
MURAKAMI HARUKI (b. 1949)
TV People (trans. Alfred Birnbaum)
Illustration. Nam June Paik, Global Encoder
WILLIAM GIBSON (b. 1948)
Burning Chrome
Bibliography
Credits
Index
link: instructors' manual