Jan 242007
 

I took your advice Paul.

After meeting on the water returning from Burano (11 January 2007)…Pix_2007_014 

… I bought myself a copy of The New Yorker at Waterloo station on Monday night to read on the ‘last train’ back to the West Country. It was full of words – just as I remembered – especially the lengthy fiction, so many that I did not have the energy to read them all. I still liked the cartoons the most – also just as I remembered, when aged about 8 I fingered my first copy of The New Yorker. My granny had it posted from America to Scotland for the summer months where we went for our family holidays, before she went back over the pond in the autumn. That was 1959. It is nice how some things don’t change. I read on…

(A Life, The New Yorker, January 22, 2007, page 68 & 69 – Zbigniew Herbert, translated, from the Polish, by Alissa Valles) -

I was a quiet boy a little sleepy and – amazingly-

… the poem began. I liked the poem best stopping there, and losing the rest along with the title to the poem. Miraculous, like a Sappho fragment.

As it turns out Paul, when we met on the water, I happened to have a copy of the Fragments of Sappho (If Not, Winter, translated, from the Greek, by Anne Carson, Virago 2003) in one pocket of my overcoat. In the other pocket I had a copy of Venice botteghe, by Michela Scibilia (translated, from the Italian, by Giles Watson, 2006). The two were perfect guides for the city, especially the Golden Staircase that leads up from the prima piano to the seconda, where I read in the guide that "every symbol was put to the service of the rei-publica".

Finally Paul, since returning to England, I have begun reading Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (translated, from the Italian, by William Weaver, Vintage 1997). I had already bought a copy of Le città invisibili (Arnold Mondadore, 2006) while we were in Venice. I cannot really read Italian, but on the back-cover Italo Calvino is quoted – "Penso d’aver scritto qualcosa come un ultimo poema d’amore alle città", so anything is possible.

mmj