January 30, 2015

Matin1900John Duncan Fergusson d. January 30, 1961

Wislawa Szymborska: Utopiatranslated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanaghpresented by Tom Clark Island where it all becomes clear solid ground beneath your feet .. the only roads are those that offer access bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs the tree of valid supposition grows here with branches disentangled since time immemorial .. the tree of understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple .. sprouts by the spring called now I get it the thicker the woods, the vaster the vista the valley of obviously

Dark Sea and Red SailJohn Duncan Fergusson1909

As all children know, truth Dan Disney as all children know, truth is a snake eating its own tail while householders whinny ethics across dining rooms of thought and this might be the last thing that can be said for any generalissimo inside a Behavior Army critical-eyed amid the jaunty peasant societies (little shops, storytelling, pigs, perhaps a bench) and as all children know, truth is self-polishing, a bust of bronze shining a slew of reality across ancestral paths where the dead pick turnips, shake-boned to narratives arriving by cartload and this might be the last thing that can be said

Walter Benjamin’s Voice David Beer reviews Radio Benjamin, by Walter Benjamin, edited by Lecia Rosenthalberfois

Writing at sometime around 1930 or 1931, Walter Benjamin suggested that the voice on the radio is a like a visitor in the home, as such it is “assessed just as quickly and sharply” as any other houseguest. Unfortunately, as far as we are aware, there are no existing audio tapes with which to assess our sympathies for Walter Benjamin’s radio voice. Yet the newly translated collection of the scripts from his various radio broadcasts, gathered in the recently published volume Radio Benjamin, provides us with some insights into what he might have sounded like. There is an undoubtable audio texture to these printed passages, the grain of his voice and the style of his speech find their way into the prose. But this selection of his radio outputs does more than simply allow us to listen to his imagined voice; these pieces also reveal something of his writing, his working practices and the emergence and formation of some of his key ideas. Far from being an unwelcome and maybe even annoying distraction from his work, as Benjamin himself would have us believe, it would seem, that these broadcasts became an important part of the development of his thinking and writing (as has been briefly suggested by Gilloch, 2002: 170 and Brodersen, 1996: 193). These radio pieces, which are beautiful in their imagery and telling in their scope, simply attest too much care and attention for them to be considered insignificant or disposable.

SoirJohn Duncan Fergusson 1900