Hi Dave,
as it gets weirder and weirder conducting all this under the trace vacancies
subject heading i'll persist in doing just that. I like the idea that 'trace
vacancies' conveys.
I thought you might be interested in this (the gendering aside); the intro
para from David McDuff's Osip Mandel'shtam 'Selected Poems':
'The history of Russian poetry is marked by a sizeable number of injustices
and untimely ends. Its victims include Pushkin and Lermontov no less than
Blok, Mayakovsky, Tsvetaeva. Yet there is at first sight nothing
extraordinary in this: poets have been bad risks no matter where they have
lived. There is something in the calling of poet which goes against ordinary
descriptions and categories - the poet seeks his justification which may
often appear to be lacking. The misfortunes that befall him are often
traceable to a cosmic doubt or anxiety. A vision of pure beauty, an ideal
may an intolerable punishment to its possessor. In the Western world such
disasters have an essentially private character. The poet's destruction,
when it occurs, is a matter between himself and his muse. Neglected by the
mass of his fellow beings, he may nonetheless see in his predicament a
symptom of some universal process of conflict or transition - but that is
only his interpretation of the case. For most people he will remain an
outcast, at best an eccentric, whose works may be read for education or
pleasure, but seldom taken 'seriously' as having relevance to practical
affairs.'
Mandel'shtam was hounded precisely because in Russia poetry DOES matter and
has, or at least had, practical significance.
love and love
cris
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