to live is important

books, baking, and blabbering on

Paula Modersohn-Becker, Sandkuhle am Weyerberg, 1899

Recent Favorites:

• A period of literary exaltation. Do you know that feeling when you open up a book and from the very first sentence you know it will change you? That has happened to me with The Gutenberg Elegies. I probably won’t say much about it because the ideas in this book are swirling so much around in my mind at all times that I know I will eventually write a whole post about it. All I’ll say is that I think anyone who loves books and reading should read this book. In general I’ve come out of a reading dry spell and stumbled into a heap of books that I’ve truly adored. Among them are The Professor (Charlotte Bronte’s first novel), My name is Asher Lev (Chaim Potok, recommended by a friend, really captivating and full of thoughts on art/faith/religion/culture), Journal of a Novel (I have much to say about this one as well and you’ve already heard some of it), Tortilla Flat (Steinbeck, I will be reading my way through his books now), North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell, still reeling from this one as I’ve just finished it)

  

Maybe it’s reading these classics that has got me in the mood to watch older movies as well, classics that I’ve often heard referenced but have never seen.

—a brief pause to have a chat about something—I’ve heard it said that our culture as a whole is going through some sort of regressive stage of nostalgia, and I don’t know about regression but I guess I agree about the nostalgia part and I think there are valid reasons for that. But it occurred to me that attributing the desire to spend our attention on the watching and reading of old things might have nothing to do with nostalgia, either personal or collective. We are born into an old world, a place with a whole rich history and vast archive of art. How crazy would it be to confine ourselves to the smallest, youngest part of this broad spectrum of the world’s culture? It actually makes the most sense to me to spend a small fraction of my time reading or watching contemporary works, and a larger portion reading and watching/listening to the things that came before I was even here. Why shrink this rich old world into a younger, shallower version of itself?

• The Philadelphia Story. I love Carey Grant. I spent my high school years watching An Affair to Remember and Charade over and over, fawning. And I love James Stewart with his lanky charm and iconic drawl. I freaked out when I saw them side by side on the poster for this movie, and I freaked out even more when I experienced the effect of their contrasting personalities cohabiting the same screen. 112 minutes of impeccable entertainment. The scene that had me laughing out loud was Jimmy drunkenly yelling “Don’t interrupt me!” at a ringing telephone.

  

• My sister all but forced me to start making sourdough. I felt it was too big a commitment to take on right now but she (being two years older and much wiser) thrust a jar of starter into my hands and said it would be worth it. Suddenly I had a responsibility. I couldn’t let it starve or die or whatever starter does when neglected. So now making bread is part of my life. I take breaks from painting to fold my dough. I like the globby stretch of it, the floury softness of it, the shape it makes when you form it, all tight and smooth and perfect. I like checking on it to find that, as promised, it has doubled in size while I wasn’t looking. And of course, I like eating it with layers of butter, brie, and raspberry jam. Or heaping on so many toppings for a breakfast toast that you can’t see the bread anymore.

  

• The Book. One of the most surprising and delightful things that I’ve ever received in the mail was this treasure from Sheryl, who has become a dear friend though she lives across the globe from me. A small book made out of a folded sheet of A4 paper with funny and nonsensical instructions inside. She said she’d used it as a template to make her own little books many times and I of course wanted to do the same. Here is the book, along with my own version, written and illustrated with very little rhyme or reason on a long lazy Sunday afternoon. (I mismeasured somehow and one page came out too short but I decided to incorporate that into the story rather than start over)

  

  

• Old books/Illustrations/Rilke/Translation

  In an old bookshop on a recent trip my mom bought me this beautiful copy of Rilke’s Duino Elegies. It is copyrighted 1957 and is both translated and illustrated by Harry Behn.

  First we must appreciate the inscription: “to Marge, I didn’t just pick these poems up — I’ve read them and enjoyed them. So you better read them or I’ll be offended!! Stephen”

  

  And the illustrations:

  

  And now we must discuss translation. Because as I was reading the ninth elegy, one that I’m a bit familiar with, I realized how different the translation was from the one I’ve read in the past. Harry Behn’s translation:

  “...But simply because to live is important, and we are needed by all this here and now, these ephemera that oddly concern us.”

  My other english version (translated by J.B. Leishman and Stephen Spender) “...But because being here is much, and because all this that’s here, so fleeting, seems to require us and strangely concerns us.”

  One of my favorite biographies is titled after this line. In english it is called “Being Here is Everything: The Life of Paula Modersohn-Becker” But in the original French it is called “Être ici est une splendeur” and on the inside cover of my english translation the line from Rilke’s poem is quoted as “Being here is wondrous.”

  After comparing each version, my head spinning, I briefly wondered… since I don’t speak German, have I ever even read Rilke??? How can a person translate a poem without imposing their own vision onto it? But then, I guess that’s what happens when we read any poem, it gets translated directly to our brain through the lens of of our unique selves. To live is important, and being here is much, is everything. To be here is a splendor, a wonder. Maybe I am not worse off for the necessity of translation, a pile of open books on my lap stacked like Russian nesting dolls, each a window looking out onto a slightly different angle of the same view. But those small differences change everything, and I have found myself going back and forth, this version then that, line by line. In one line this version cracks me open, yet in the next I feel drawn to the other. Because of this I have no obvious favorite, but if I had to pick I think it would be the Bhen version. In the first elegy he writes: “Many a star waited your gazing upon it to glimmer” whereas my other copy says “many a star was waiting for you to perceive it” and I like to think that the stars held back their glimmer until prompted by the gaze.

  

I feel as if I’ve yapped on forever so here’s a few Paula Modersohn-Becker paintings to soothe your eyes. She’s most known for her self portraits which are wonderful but I dug through the WikiArt catalogue and found some other gems I’d never seen before.

Paula Modersohn-Becker, Elizabeth with Hens under and Apple Tree, 1902

Paula Modersohn-Becker, Kneeling Mother with Child, 1907

Paula Modersohn-Becker, Woman with Goose, C. 1899