READIN

🦋 The Poets and the Animals

Elizabeth Costello is a book which I am finding requires access to source material. (I am kind of ignoring the major piece of source material for this book, but trying to track down the incidental pieces...) Below the fold, some source material for chapter 4, "The Poets and the Animals."

This interview with Coetzee from the Swedish magazine Djurens Rätt ("Animal Rights"), while not strictly speaking "source material," also seems useful.

Der Panther, von Rilke

Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris

Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe
so müd geworden, dass er nichts mehr hält.
Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe
und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.

Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte,
der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,
ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte,
in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht.

Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille
sich lautlos auf -. Dann geht ein Bild hinein,
geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille -
und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.

tr. J.B. Leishman

His gaze, going past those bars, has got so misted
with tiredness, it can take in nothing more.
He feels as though a thousand bars existed,
and no more world beyond them than before.

Those supply powerful paddings, turning there
in tiniest of circles, well might be
the dance of forces round a centre where
some mighty will stands paralyticly.

Just now and then the pupils' noiseless shutter
if lifted. - Then an image with indart,
down throught the limbs' intensive stillness flutter,
and end its being in the heart.

A Second Glance at a Jaguar, by Ted Hughes

Skinful of bowl, he bowls them,
The hip going in and out of joint, dropping the spine
With the urgency of his hurry
Like a cat going along under thrown stones, under cover,
Glancing sideways, running
Under his spine. A terrible, stump-legged waddle
Like a thick Aztec disemboweller,
Club-swinging, trying to grind some square
Socket between his hind legs round,
Carrying his head like a brazier of spilling embers,
And the black bit of his mouth, he takes it
Between his back teeth, he has to wear his skin out,
He swipes a lap at the water-trough as he turns,
Swivelling the ball of his heel on the polished spot,
Showing his belly like a butterfly
At every stride he has to turn a corner
In himself and correct it. His head
Is like the worn down stump of another whole jaguar,
His body is just the engine shoving it forward,
Lifting the air up and shoving on under,
The weight of his fangs hanging the mouth open,
Bottom jaw combing the ground. A gorged look,
Gangster, club-tail lumped along behind gracelessly,
He's wearing himself to heavy ovals,
Muttering some mantrah, some drum-song of murder
To keep his rage brightening, making his skin
Intolerable, spurred by the rosettes, the cain-brands,
Wearing the spots from the inside,
Rounding some revenge. Going like a prayer-wheel,
The head dragging forward, the body keeping up,
The hind legs lagging. He coils, he flourishes
The blackjack tail as if looking for a target,
Hurrying through the underworld, soundless.

posted evening of Monday, February 9th, 2009
➳ More posts about Elizabeth Costello
➳ More posts about J.M. Coetzee
➳ More posts about Readings
➳ More posts about Rainer Maria Rilke
➳ More posts about Poetry

I agree with you, but decided I was going to read it for a first time without checking the sources, just enjoying the narrative, leaving the rest for a future time.

I guess next time I read it, it'll be quite a different adventure, and I'm looking forward to it.

posted evening of February 9th, 2009 by Jorge López

just enjoying the narrative

I find that strange -- the narrative seems to me like a thin connective tissue stretched over the frame of ideas in this book. Not to denigrate it -- as I said before it is elegant and spare. But the meat of this novel (I'm grinning now, I was not intending any reference to Costello's vegetarianism) is in the arguments and the allusions. The characters and their interactions are interesting, but it seems to me like the main the characters are accessible to me is through examining their arguments and the texts on which those arguments are built.

posted evening of February 9th, 2009 by Jeremy

I agree with you on the importance of arguments on the novel. Maybe I didn't explain myself very well, but my point is that even if all the references included in the book weren't real (in Borges' style), it'd still be a great book to read, just because how the author makes his characters discuss and show different arguments and ideas in a very realistic and convincing way.

posted evening of February 10th, 2009 by Jorge López

Oh, I see. Yes, no argument there.

posted evening of February 10th, 2009 by Jeremy

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