The film's title in the original Czech is "Tonka Sibenice" and the lead
character's first name is "Tonka". "Tanka" never entered my mind. I
always hope my poems say nothing, but in this case I realized I had
accidentally inscribed the film's movement in a very condensed manner.
Comparing "Tonka of the Gallows" to "The Scarlet Letter" (the versions
directed by Victor Sjostrom in 1926 and Wim Wenders in 1973) was an overt
gesture towards "saying something" literally incited at the last moment by
the need for a line beginning with "A". I might regret it eventually.
These lines by John Cage seem appropriate here: "I have nothing to say /
and I am saying it / and that is poetry / as I needed it"
Barry
On Tue, 12 Jun 2007 23:37:01 +0300, kasper salonen <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
>you mean TANKA, I take it. this poem says little or nothing without
>this background.
>
>the background, though, is intriguing.
>
>KS
>
>On 12/06/07, Barry Alpert <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> TONKA of the GALLOWS
>>
>> via Karel Anton
>>
>>
>> Tu reviendras . . .
>> On la cherche . . .
>> Now I
>> know why I have come.
>> [A Czech Scarlet Letter].
>>
>>
>> Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD US / 6-12-07 (1:37 PM)
>>
>>
>> The only copy of this film with English subtitles
>> was originally destined for the French-speaking market
>> and therefore my first viewing of the first Czech
>> talkie (1930) allowed me to work with what I
>> was hearing as well as reading. An unusual narrative
>> "lured" me in: a country girl becomes a popular
>> Prague hooker but after volunteering to join a man
>> condemned to the gallows for his last night in prison,
>> she's stigmatized upon her return to the bordello.
>> After being fired, she declines, reunites with her country
>> fiancé, but when he learns of her "transforming encounter",
>> a series of events leads inevitably to her accidental broken
>> neck.
>>
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