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Why I Write
Devotion
A work of creative brilliance may seem like magic—its source a mystery, its impact unexpectedly stirring. How does an artist accomplish such an achievement, connecting deeply with an audience never met? In this groundbreaking book, one of our culture’s beloved artists offers a detailed account of her own creative process, inspirations, and unexpected connections.
Patti Smith, a National Book Award-winning author, first presents an original and beautifully crafted tale of obsession—a young skater who lives for her art, a possessive collector who ruthlessly seeks his prize, a relationship forged of need both craven and exalted. She then takes us on a second journey, exploring the sources of her story. We travel through the South of France to Camus’s house, and visit the garden of the great publisher Gallimard where the ghosts of Mishima, Nabokov, and Genet mingle. Smith tracks down Simone Weil’s grave in a lonely cemetery, hours from London, and winds through the nameless Paris streets of Patrick Modiano’s novels. Whether writing in a café or a train, Smith generously opens her notebooks and lets us glimpse the alchemy of her art and craft in this arresting and original book on writing.
The Why I Write series is based on the Windham-Campbell Lectures, delivered annually to commemorate the awarding of the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes at Yale University.
Patti Smith, a National Book Award-winning author, first presents an original and beautifully crafted tale of obsession—a young skater who lives for her art, a possessive collector who ruthlessly seeks his prize, a relationship forged of need both craven and exalted. She then takes us on a second journey, exploring the sources of her story. We travel through the South of France to Camus’s house, and visit the garden of the great publisher Gallimard where the ghosts of Mishima, Nabokov, and Genet mingle. Smith tracks down Simone Weil’s grave in a lonely cemetery, hours from London, and winds through the nameless Paris streets of Patrick Modiano’s novels. Whether writing in a café or a train, Smith generously opens her notebooks and lets us glimpse the alchemy of her art and craft in this arresting and original book on writing.
The Why I Write series is based on the Windham-Campbell Lectures, delivered annually to commemorate the awarding of the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes at Yale University.
95 pages, Hardcover
First published September 12, 2017
651 people are currently reading
29021 people want to read
About the author
Patti Smith
149 books13.9k followersPATTI SMITH is a writer, performer, and visual artist. She gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary merging of poetry and rock. She has released twelve albums, including Horses, which has been hailed as one of the top one hundred albums of all time by Rolling Stone.
Smith had her first exhibit of drawings at the Gotham Book Mart in 1973 and has been represented by the Robert Miller Gallery since 1978. Her books include Just Kids, winner of the National Book Award in 2010, Wītt, Babel, Woolgathering, The Coral Sea, and Auguries of Innocence.
In 2005, the French Ministry of Culture awarded Smith the title of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, the highest honor given to an artist by the French Republic. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.
Smith married the musician Fred Sonic Smith in Detroit in 1980. They had a son, Jackson, and a daughter, Jesse. Smith resides in New York City.
Smith had her first exhibit of drawings at the Gotham Book Mart in 1973 and has been represented by the Robert Miller Gallery since 1978. Her books include Just Kids, winner of the National Book Award in 2010, Wītt, Babel, Woolgathering, The Coral Sea, and Auguries of Innocence.
In 2005, the French Ministry of Culture awarded Smith the title of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres, the highest honor given to an artist by the French Republic. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.
Smith married the musician Fred Sonic Smith in Detroit in 1980. They had a son, Jackson, and a daughter, Jesse. Smith resides in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,021 reviews
June 9, 2018
An unconventional but inspiring little book. It’s part memoir, part fiction, part travel writing. I just love Patti Smith’s writing.
June 18, 2020
A shot of inspiration.
•To relieve pain caused by bad books and inflammatory writing.
•Do not use if you are allergic to elegant prose.
•Apply as many times as necessary and consult your doctor if the symptoms persist for more than five seconds.
•Only take this medicine when you are seeking for an intimate and melancholic read.
•Keep it stored on a cool dry shelf.
July 30, 2024
Devotion by Patti Smith was the 2016 Windham-Campbell Lecture at Yale University. Smith, a singer, writer, and photographer, wrote M Train and Just Kids and several volumes of poetry. Her album Horses is widely viewed as one of the great rock albums of all time.
Where does her inspiration come from? Smith writes every day, usually in a café in Manhattan. She’s in her seventies now, having survived a husband and a long time partner, Robert Mapplethorpe, and is still writing and making music. New York's own (former) downtown rocker, street poet, punk. And as she says of her self, once just a working-class kid, too.
Of late, it seems many in the world have come to pay particular attention to Smith as writer. (Just Kids got our attention). In this short book on this subject she doesn’t disappoint, helping us see the way she draws on experience—and particularly her experience of art and literature—to develop her own writing. Smith, who first visited Paris in her twenties, returns there to talk about writing with some journalists, armed with some books for the trip, including a biography of Simone Weil, a novel by Patrick Modiano, and many memories of Paris, some of them informed by her own photography, some by a lifetime of reading. While in Paris, Smith takes the occasion to visit the graves or homes of artists she sees as touchstones for her life and work: Albert Camus, Simone Weil, Patrick Modiano.
The book is a small book; I love small books. There are three sections in it: “How the Mind Works,” “Devotion,” and “A Dream is not a Dream.”
Smith says books or songs or films are triggers (oh, that’s a term Richard Hugo uses, in The Triggering Town) for her creative activity, for writing. “The right book can serve as a docent of sorts, setting a tone or even altering the course of a journey.”
In her hotel she watches a young girl skater on tv skating “as if nothing else exists.” She’s reading Simone Weil in a hotel blocks from where Baudelaire began writing Les Fleurs de Mal. She's reading Modiano, taking us obsessively through the Paris of his past. She’s aware of the ghosts of her favorite writers who have lived here: Baudelaire, Camus, Joyce, Modiano; they are everywhere.
I type this in the car on my midwinter trip to New Orleans and a brief stay on the Gulf Coast, armed with my own docents, including this book, of course! And Camus’s The Fall. Several books of poetry, a graphic novel or five, including The Compleat Moonshadow. I’m listening from time to time as I drive to Since I Fell by Dennis Lehane, which is not (in any way that is obvious to me) affecting me deeply. We leave Chicago at 7 a.m. at zero degrees; at 4:30 as I write this as I cross the Yocona River, it is 44 degrees. We take I-Phone pictures of new state signs from the car, we repeat the letters of the Mississippi River as we cross it. What is the thing or phrase that will shift my consciousness in a useful direction? Or will it be a musical encounter at Maison in New Orleans?
On a visit to a cemetery in search of Paul Valery, Smith sees a gravestone of a young girl with the word “Dévouement” etched on it: Devotion.
In New Orleans I go to the St Louis #1 Cemetery, one of the oldest cemeteries in New Orleans, much of it in disrepair. All the tombs are above the ground. Also called The City of the Dead, it is featured in zombie films, and is the place for voodoo rituals. It is a place where angels are said to be so prevalent that you can sometimes hear the flapping of their wings. Tombs we see include the New Orleans Home for the Incurables; The Tomb of Marie Laveau, VooDoo Queen of New Orleans, and The Society for the Relief of Destitute Orphan Boys Tomb.
Maybe to learn that reading can be inspiring to a writer is not that startlingly original, but I like how it works itself out in the central piece, “Devotion,” about an orphan for whom ice skating “is pure feeling” and who seems to have an affair with an older man. It’s not that great or even that compelling a story, one of lost innocence, but I like how it gives evidence to her theory; The figure skater, images from an Estonian film, Weil, Modiano, Camus, a visit to a French cemetery, they’re all here in her story. We see how Smith’s mind recycles impressions and ideas into art.
"I was looking for something, and I found something else." Art as serendipity, as whim, as discovery, in a life lived also deliberately, consciously.
Smith goes to the house of the daughter of Camus, where she looks through the manuscript Camus was working on, The First Man, when he died in a car accident. This short anecdote has magic in it. There’s an air of nostalgia and mortality in it, too. I make a note to reread this book, having just read Camus's The Fall.
I like Smith's book. Not as much as Just Kids, but it is a sweet short (and little) essay, Smith talking to us. But maybe you just wanted me to cut to the chase and tell you Smith’s answer to the question: Why do we write? So-ree! Okay, here it is:
“Because we cannot simply live.”
Where does her inspiration come from? Smith writes every day, usually in a café in Manhattan. She’s in her seventies now, having survived a husband and a long time partner, Robert Mapplethorpe, and is still writing and making music. New York's own (former) downtown rocker, street poet, punk. And as she says of her self, once just a working-class kid, too.
Of late, it seems many in the world have come to pay particular attention to Smith as writer. (Just Kids got our attention). In this short book on this subject she doesn’t disappoint, helping us see the way she draws on experience—and particularly her experience of art and literature—to develop her own writing. Smith, who first visited Paris in her twenties, returns there to talk about writing with some journalists, armed with some books for the trip, including a biography of Simone Weil, a novel by Patrick Modiano, and many memories of Paris, some of them informed by her own photography, some by a lifetime of reading. While in Paris, Smith takes the occasion to visit the graves or homes of artists she sees as touchstones for her life and work: Albert Camus, Simone Weil, Patrick Modiano.
The book is a small book; I love small books. There are three sections in it: “How the Mind Works,” “Devotion,” and “A Dream is not a Dream.”
Smith says books or songs or films are triggers (oh, that’s a term Richard Hugo uses, in The Triggering Town) for her creative activity, for writing. “The right book can serve as a docent of sorts, setting a tone or even altering the course of a journey.”
In her hotel she watches a young girl skater on tv skating “as if nothing else exists.” She’s reading Simone Weil in a hotel blocks from where Baudelaire began writing Les Fleurs de Mal. She's reading Modiano, taking us obsessively through the Paris of his past. She’s aware of the ghosts of her favorite writers who have lived here: Baudelaire, Camus, Joyce, Modiano; they are everywhere.
I type this in the car on my midwinter trip to New Orleans and a brief stay on the Gulf Coast, armed with my own docents, including this book, of course! And Camus’s The Fall. Several books of poetry, a graphic novel or five, including The Compleat Moonshadow. I’m listening from time to time as I drive to Since I Fell by Dennis Lehane, which is not (in any way that is obvious to me) affecting me deeply. We leave Chicago at 7 a.m. at zero degrees; at 4:30 as I write this as I cross the Yocona River, it is 44 degrees. We take I-Phone pictures of new state signs from the car, we repeat the letters of the Mississippi River as we cross it. What is the thing or phrase that will shift my consciousness in a useful direction? Or will it be a musical encounter at Maison in New Orleans?
On a visit to a cemetery in search of Paul Valery, Smith sees a gravestone of a young girl with the word “Dévouement” etched on it: Devotion.
In New Orleans I go to the St Louis #1 Cemetery, one of the oldest cemeteries in New Orleans, much of it in disrepair. All the tombs are above the ground. Also called The City of the Dead, it is featured in zombie films, and is the place for voodoo rituals. It is a place where angels are said to be so prevalent that you can sometimes hear the flapping of their wings. Tombs we see include the New Orleans Home for the Incurables; The Tomb of Marie Laveau, VooDoo Queen of New Orleans, and The Society for the Relief of Destitute Orphan Boys Tomb.
Maybe to learn that reading can be inspiring to a writer is not that startlingly original, but I like how it works itself out in the central piece, “Devotion,” about an orphan for whom ice skating “is pure feeling” and who seems to have an affair with an older man. It’s not that great or even that compelling a story, one of lost innocence, but I like how it gives evidence to her theory; The figure skater, images from an Estonian film, Weil, Modiano, Camus, a visit to a French cemetery, they’re all here in her story. We see how Smith’s mind recycles impressions and ideas into art.
"I was looking for something, and I found something else." Art as serendipity, as whim, as discovery, in a life lived also deliberately, consciously.
Smith goes to the house of the daughter of Camus, where she looks through the manuscript Camus was working on, The First Man, when he died in a car accident. This short anecdote has magic in it. There’s an air of nostalgia and mortality in it, too. I make a note to reread this book, having just read Camus's The Fall.
I like Smith's book. Not as much as Just Kids, but it is a sweet short (and little) essay, Smith talking to us. But maybe you just wanted me to cut to the chase and tell you Smith’s answer to the question: Why do we write? So-ree! Okay, here it is:
“Because we cannot simply live.”
July 30, 2019
As a reading experience this was unsatisfactory.
A brief book about writing and the writer's life, Devotion begins with a short section wherein Patti Smith travels to Paris to spend a week doing business with her French publisher. Her time there is fairly quiet, a lot of walks and relaxed meals in cafes. On a train trip she is suddenly inspired to write and feverishly turns out a short story in her notebook; she mentions that it contains several elements inspired by the preceding few days: a round piece of ham in a restaurant becomes a round pond in the story; a figure skater she sees on TV becomes her main character; a bit of a film she saw provides some of the imagery.
The entire short story then appears as the book's middle and longest section. This is a cool idea in theory, a glimpse of the writerly process, but sadly the story itself was odd and unenjoyable, with remote characters and a fablelike quality that lacked immediacy. It felt endless.
The last section of the book details Patti Smith's trip to Albert Camus's house. Camus's daughter invites her there, and Smith gets to stay in Camus's room, have lunch with Camus's daughter and spend time with Camus's granddaughter, take in the same views Camus took in, and even look at Camus's last manuscript, handwritten and complete with his crossouts and insertions. The point of this section is that looking at Camus's manuscript inspires Smith to do some more writing of her own, but to me it honestly just felt like she was bragging about her amazing experience at Camus's house; the writing element was peripheral.
This Camus section unfortunately cast the Paris section of the book in a new light for me; Devotion now felt like a mediocre short story bookended by two vignettes about how awesome Patti Smith's life is. The whole thing ends with photographic reproductions of the pages she wrote on the train. I guess these were meant to inspire the reader in the way Camus's pages inspired Smith, but they were pretty much illegible.
So that's it. It wasn't terrible or anything, but there is nothing about it that would make me recommend it to anyone. Thanks for stopping by.
A brief book about writing and the writer's life, Devotion begins with a short section wherein Patti Smith travels to Paris to spend a week doing business with her French publisher. Her time there is fairly quiet, a lot of walks and relaxed meals in cafes. On a train trip she is suddenly inspired to write and feverishly turns out a short story in her notebook; she mentions that it contains several elements inspired by the preceding few days: a round piece of ham in a restaurant becomes a round pond in the story; a figure skater she sees on TV becomes her main character; a bit of a film she saw provides some of the imagery.
The entire short story then appears as the book's middle and longest section. This is a cool idea in theory, a glimpse of the writerly process, but sadly the story itself was odd and unenjoyable, with remote characters and a fablelike quality that lacked immediacy. It felt endless.
The last section of the book details Patti Smith's trip to Albert Camus's house. Camus's daughter invites her there, and Smith gets to stay in Camus's room, have lunch with Camus's daughter and spend time with Camus's granddaughter, take in the same views Camus took in, and even look at Camus's last manuscript, handwritten and complete with his crossouts and insertions. The point of this section is that looking at Camus's manuscript inspires Smith to do some more writing of her own, but to me it honestly just felt like she was bragging about her amazing experience at Camus's house; the writing element was peripheral.
This Camus section unfortunately cast the Paris section of the book in a new light for me; Devotion now felt like a mediocre short story bookended by two vignettes about how awesome Patti Smith's life is. The whole thing ends with photographic reproductions of the pages she wrote on the train. I guess these were meant to inspire the reader in the way Camus's pages inspired Smith, but they were pretty much illegible.
So that's it. It wasn't terrible or anything, but there is nothing about it that would make me recommend it to anyone. Thanks for stopping by.
November 7, 2018
Liked the autobiographical parts, absolutely loathed thr short story/novella in the middle. I never want to read a book about a "16-year old girl" having an affair with a "man in his late thirties". Just. NO.
October 4, 2017
A worthwhile addition to the Patti Smith library. "Devotion" beautifully describes Patti Smith's attitude toward the creative life, as anyone who has read M Train or Just Kids can attest.
This tiny volume is divided into three parts. The first, "How the Mind Works" is not analytical but illustrative. It starts, "Somehow, in search of something else, I stumbled upon..." A film about Estonians deported to Siberian collective farms in 1941. Images from the film. The difficulty of capturing images in writing. "this was the beginning of that something else, but I didn't know it then."
The haunting image. Trying to work in a cafe. Reading Modiano's Paris Nocturne, and reaching for her pen. The interaction of the mind that observes and absorbs with ideas and creations, and then the springing to life of the creative impulse.
Time and again, we hear that Patti Smith 'travels light'--which is interesting to me, in that yes, she packs in a minute, heads out to pay devotion to any number of cultural figures--in this section its Simone Weil, who merges with Modiano and that Estonian film. She travels light physically, but internally, she travels crammed to the mental rafters with raptures and associations, obsessions and curiosities.
WE go to Paris and drink coffee at the Cafe de Flore, pay our respects to Picasso and Apollinaire, to"the Deux Magots of the existentialists. The Hotel des Etrangers, where Rimbaud and Verlaine presided over the Circle Zutique..." and now Rimbaud becomes part of the matrix. Paris holds a welter of her associations, to French film, to French and expat literature, to younger versions of herself. She comes across a skater on French television, a young Russian who melds with the figure of Simone Weil, and so on. One association leads to another. This is the inner life of art, she never has to say.
I loved the way she described Paris as a book: "Paris is a city one can read without a map...." and it inspires me to think of other cities I've known, other books of places. The way the taking in of stimuli bonds to other stimuli, to memory, to bits of knowledge, heated in the crucible of obsession, leads to inspiration--to the action of picking up a pen. Reading Patti Smith always makes me want to write. She plays the instrument of her creative self at a certain vibration that always vibrates my own.
The second, largest, part of the book is a long story about a skater, a young skater like a young Simone Weil, a pure artist. I was surprised how distant the story was, very chilly and abstract--it reminded me of the French writer Pierre Jean Jouve, one of the predecessors of the French New Wave. I was disappointed, wanted more of the autobiographical material, or at least less of an abstract, cool-toned story--though I liked it better when the characters moved on to North Africa, picking up the Rimbaud theme.
But still, there was something else, I couldn't put my finger on it until I read an interview with Smith by critic Scott Timberg (Culture Crash) in the LA Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/p...
She said something that brought the story into perfect view, describing her love of French literature: "There’s just something about his language. There’s something about French in translation that I just relate to. Maybe it’s the starkness. It’s both complex and simple at the same time."
In the story called "Devotion," Smith was writing her version of that cool, stark French existentialist New Wave literature. Of course. The story itself is an act of devotion.
The third part of the book is an extremely short section, "A Dream is Not A Dream"--which echoed for me the music of her line from the song In My Blakean Year: "One road is paved in gold One road is just a road." I like the way she describes "why I write"--"to set oneself apart, cocooned, react in solitude, despite the wants of others." Her respect for the struggle: "We must write, engaging in a myriad of struggles... We must write, but not without consisted effort and a measure of sacrifice: to channel the future, to revisit childhood, and to rein in the follies and horrors of the imagination for a pulsating race of readers."
She is invited to Camus' home, stays in his room, and his granddaughter lets her hold his last manuscript:
"... primed to embrace this precious time, wanting for nothing. But slowly I discerned a familiar shift in my concentration. That compulsion that prohibits me from completely surrendering to a work of art, drawing me from the halls of a favorite museum to my own drawing table... That is the decisive power of a singular work: a call to action.... The words before me were elegant, blistering. My hands vibrated. Infused with confidence, I had the urge to bolt, mount the stairs, close the heavy door that had been his, sit before my own stack of foolscap and begin at my own beginning. An act of guiltless sacrilege."
The devotion is not ultimately to the work, but to the divine fire.
This tiny volume is divided into three parts. The first, "How the Mind Works" is not analytical but illustrative. It starts, "Somehow, in search of something else, I stumbled upon..." A film about Estonians deported to Siberian collective farms in 1941. Images from the film. The difficulty of capturing images in writing. "this was the beginning of that something else, but I didn't know it then."
The haunting image. Trying to work in a cafe. Reading Modiano's Paris Nocturne, and reaching for her pen. The interaction of the mind that observes and absorbs with ideas and creations, and then the springing to life of the creative impulse.
Time and again, we hear that Patti Smith 'travels light'--which is interesting to me, in that yes, she packs in a minute, heads out to pay devotion to any number of cultural figures--in this section its Simone Weil, who merges with Modiano and that Estonian film. She travels light physically, but internally, she travels crammed to the mental rafters with raptures and associations, obsessions and curiosities.
WE go to Paris and drink coffee at the Cafe de Flore, pay our respects to Picasso and Apollinaire, to"the Deux Magots of the existentialists. The Hotel des Etrangers, where Rimbaud and Verlaine presided over the Circle Zutique..." and now Rimbaud becomes part of the matrix. Paris holds a welter of her associations, to French film, to French and expat literature, to younger versions of herself. She comes across a skater on French television, a young Russian who melds with the figure of Simone Weil, and so on. One association leads to another. This is the inner life of art, she never has to say.
I loved the way she described Paris as a book: "Paris is a city one can read without a map...." and it inspires me to think of other cities I've known, other books of places. The way the taking in of stimuli bonds to other stimuli, to memory, to bits of knowledge, heated in the crucible of obsession, leads to inspiration--to the action of picking up a pen. Reading Patti Smith always makes me want to write. She plays the instrument of her creative self at a certain vibration that always vibrates my own.
The second, largest, part of the book is a long story about a skater, a young skater like a young Simone Weil, a pure artist. I was surprised how distant the story was, very chilly and abstract--it reminded me of the French writer Pierre Jean Jouve, one of the predecessors of the French New Wave. I was disappointed, wanted more of the autobiographical material, or at least less of an abstract, cool-toned story--though I liked it better when the characters moved on to North Africa, picking up the Rimbaud theme.
But still, there was something else, I couldn't put my finger on it until I read an interview with Smith by critic Scott Timberg (Culture Crash) in the LA Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/p...
She said something that brought the story into perfect view, describing her love of French literature: "There’s just something about his language. There’s something about French in translation that I just relate to. Maybe it’s the starkness. It’s both complex and simple at the same time."
In the story called "Devotion," Smith was writing her version of that cool, stark French existentialist New Wave literature. Of course. The story itself is an act of devotion.
The third part of the book is an extremely short section, "A Dream is Not A Dream"--which echoed for me the music of her line from the song In My Blakean Year: "One road is paved in gold One road is just a road." I like the way she describes "why I write"--"to set oneself apart, cocooned, react in solitude, despite the wants of others." Her respect for the struggle: "We must write, engaging in a myriad of struggles... We must write, but not without consisted effort and a measure of sacrifice: to channel the future, to revisit childhood, and to rein in the follies and horrors of the imagination for a pulsating race of readers."
She is invited to Camus' home, stays in his room, and his granddaughter lets her hold his last manuscript:
"... primed to embrace this precious time, wanting for nothing. But slowly I discerned a familiar shift in my concentration. That compulsion that prohibits me from completely surrendering to a work of art, drawing me from the halls of a favorite museum to my own drawing table... That is the decisive power of a singular work: a call to action.... The words before me were elegant, blistering. My hands vibrated. Infused with confidence, I had the urge to bolt, mount the stairs, close the heavy door that had been his, sit before my own stack of foolscap and begin at my own beginning. An act of guiltless sacrilege."
The devotion is not ultimately to the work, but to the divine fire.
June 3, 2024
this was p e r f e c t i am so glad patti smith exists
November 1, 2020
Years ago I read Patti Smith’s Just Kids and fell in love with her writing, her story and her ability to weave the loves, sorrows and joys of her life together so effortlessly. I followed that up by reading M Train the year after, and the following year listened to the audible ofM Train and read Year of the Monkey. Last month I listened to her audible book Patti Smith at the Minetta Lane,which I loved, and today to her Devotion.
Devotion is very different from the others, part of the Why I Write series, that ‘reads’ like a memoir-ish collection of stories - a drifting in and out of thoughts which flow from one to another, some seemingly loosely connected, others more dreamlike and random. It begins with a section titled How the Mind Works
’The prospect of boarding a plane without a book produces a wave of panic. The right book can serve as a docent of sorts, setting a tone or even altering the course of a journey.’
Occasionally, thoughts like these would be ones I could relate to, or her writing about the streets of Paris would remind me of walking through Montmartre, or strolling through the streets near Notre Dame, but then it would return to thoughts on writing.
’Most often the alchemy that produces a poem or a work of fiction is hidden within the work itself, if not embedded in the coiling ridges of the mind.’
Or thoughts on life, being at one with your surroundings and yourself.
’Silence. Passing cars. The rumble of the subway. Birds calling for dawn. I want to go home, I whimpered. But I already was.’
The middle story is titled Devotion which I suppose one could consider a love story, a young girl, not-quite-woman, who is a skater, the one thing that gave her ’the tools to express the inexpressible.’ Twirling about giddily, she experienced the melancholy luxury of solitary joy. Her love is skating although there is a man, as well, in his late thirties … ’She had skated through his waking hours...He imagined glimpsing her moving through crowds in faraway places.’
’She never asked for love, nor longed for affection, had no experience with boys, not even adolescent kisses. She only wished to know who she was, and to skate. That was all she desired.’
Then follows A Dream Is Not a Dream focuses mainly on writing.
’Why is one compelled to write? To set oneself apart, cocooned, rapt in solitude, despite the wants of others. Virginia Woolf had her room. Proust his shuttered windows. Marguerite Duras her muted house. Dylan Thomas his modest shed. All seeking an emptiness to imbue with words. The words that will penetrate virgin territory, crack unclaimed combinations, articulate the infinite. The words that formed Lolita, The Lover, Our Lady of the Flowers.
What is the dream? To write something fine, that would be better than I am, and that would justify my trials and indiscretions. To offer proof, through a scramble of words, that God exists.
Why do we write? A chorus erupts.
Because we cannot simply live.
Perhaps not my favourite of hers, but worth the hour or so to listen or read, if for nothing more than to just forget all that is going on outside these pages, even if for only an hour or so.
August 31, 2017
Devotion is delivered to the reader in a bouquet of immortelle with a sword hidden in the middle.
I've said it before and will continue to reiterate, Ms Smith's books are to be read slowly, methodically or you will miss the magic.
I was ecstatic when Devotion finally arrived. I skipped through my home holding it dear to my heart.
Later I read a few pages, and slept with it beside me. The connection of her work is that potent; having the book close while you sleep is safety.
"Why do we write? Because we cannot simply live." Patti Smith
I've said it before and will continue to reiterate, Ms Smith's books are to be read slowly, methodically or you will miss the magic.
I was ecstatic when Devotion finally arrived. I skipped through my home holding it dear to my heart.
Later I read a few pages, and slept with it beside me. The connection of her work is that potent; having the book close while you sleep is safety.
"Why do we write? Because we cannot simply live." Patti Smith
July 6, 2022
“why do we write? because we cannot simply live.”
September 12, 2021
Truly an amazing experience. I guarantee 𝘵𝘩𝘦 self-assured hubris after reading.
September 20, 2018
Why is one compelled to write? To set oneself apart, cocooned, rapt in solitude, despite the wants of others. Virginia Woolf had her room. Proust his shuttered windows. Marguerite Duras her muted house. Dylan Thomas his modest shed. All seeking an emptiness to imbue with words. The words that will penetrate virgin territory, crack unclaimed combinations, articulate the infinite. [...] There are stacks of notebooks that speak of years of aborted efforts, deflated euphoria, a relentless pacing of the boards. We must write, engaging in a myriad of struggles, as if breaking in a willful foal. We must write, but not without consistent effort and a measure of sacrifice: to channel the future, to revisit childhood, and to rein in the follies and horrors of the imagination for the pulsating race of readers.
August 18, 2019
Έχει κάτι η γραφή της Patti Smith. Σε κάνει να νιώθεις μια οικειότητα και μια ζεστασιά τόσο για τη συγγραφέα, όσο και για το ίδιο το βιβλίο το οποίο είναι εξαιρετικά σπάνιο χάρισμα. Τα βιβλία της σε κάνουν να θυμάσαι τον λόγο για τον οποίο αγαπάς το διάβασμα. It feels like home.
March 10, 2021
Video Review
Devotion outlines Patti Smith's writing process — from idea, to research, to frantic writing, and documentation. It almost feels like a great academic text on creative writing. Devotion is a book about what inspires writers to write. However, I preferred Just Kids. For more, see my video review.
Devotion outlines Patti Smith's writing process — from idea, to research, to frantic writing, and documentation. It almost feels like a great academic text on creative writing. Devotion is a book about what inspires writers to write. However, I preferred Just Kids. For more, see my video review.
October 16, 2017
While I often say that my love of Patti Smith's writing is massive and boundless, I may now have to qualify that to say that my love of Patti Smith's nonfiction is boundless. I could stand on street corners and harangue complete strangers into reading her absolutely perfect memoir Just Kids. It's a book so beautiful that it made me cry on the subway before 8am on a weekday. (Usually if I tear up under those circumstances, it has to do with a foul odor, or the knowledge that the week is far from over). Her memoir M Train (or as I call it, selections from what I wish had been Patti's Livejournal) was a complete delight, and surprised me in that I usually don't get that caught up in the minutiae of someone's everyday life so much; still, I was sad after we'd had our last cup of coffee together during those pages. So sad, that I'd tracked down Woolgathering, but the poetry kind of left me cold. No matter, I'd sort of lost my taste for the stuff after college, so I figured it was just me.
I was excited when Devotion was announced, and when it was explained to be a treatise about her writing and process (although she does delve into that in M Train a bit). I was absolutely over the moon when a dear friend invited me to hear Patti speak at a local reading that was handing out free copies of the new book, too. What a day! Patti read from the memoir section of Devotion (which involved a trip to France and all the meat, potatoes and coffee that made M Train so lovable) and spoke about how the rest of the slender volume was written in haste, against a deadline, as she was something at a loss as to how to describe the devotion of the process of writing in such a way. She turned to fiction to do so. She told us all about what she had been reading and watching and doing at the time, sang a few songs, and gave us a lovely evening. I could not WAIT to open this book.
The opening and closing sections were fantastic. I loved her agony over picking the right books to take on a trip (I feel her so much there) and about visiting "holy" sites of authors that meant something to her. Those sections are what earned this book three stars instead of two. It was when we delved into her fiction that the wheels fell off. I'm not really sure what an Estonian ice skater having an affair with an older guy that she may or may not be happy about having has to do with devotion to craft, but I do see a lot of the author's more "personal" likes and dislikes in there. Boy, do I ever.
I'm still hoping for another memoir of her time in Michigan raising a family, which I'm not sure will ever come, as I get the feeling she is private about some parts in her life. But if she ever decides to release another memoir about anything, or essays about anything, I will be first in line to buy it. Not sure I can say the same about her fiction.
I was excited when Devotion was announced, and when it was explained to be a treatise about her writing and process (although she does delve into that in M Train a bit). I was absolutely over the moon when a dear friend invited me to hear Patti speak at a local reading that was handing out free copies of the new book, too. What a day! Patti read from the memoir section of Devotion (which involved a trip to France and all the meat, potatoes and coffee that made M Train so lovable) and spoke about how the rest of the slender volume was written in haste, against a deadline, as she was something at a loss as to how to describe the devotion of the process of writing in such a way. She turned to fiction to do so. She told us all about what she had been reading and watching and doing at the time, sang a few songs, and gave us a lovely evening. I could not WAIT to open this book.
The opening and closing sections were fantastic. I loved her agony over picking the right books to take on a trip (I feel her so much there) and about visiting "holy" sites of authors that meant something to her. Those sections are what earned this book three stars instead of two. It was when we delved into her fiction that the wheels fell off. I'm not really sure what an Estonian ice skater having an affair with an older guy that she may or may not be happy about having has to do with devotion to craft, but I do see a lot of the author's more "personal" likes and dislikes in there. Boy, do I ever.
I'm still hoping for another memoir of her time in Michigan raising a family, which I'm not sure will ever come, as I get the feeling she is private about some parts in her life. But if she ever decides to release another memoir about anything, or essays about anything, I will be first in line to buy it. Not sure I can say the same about her fiction.
November 5, 2019
i don't quite want to use the word pretentious, because she seems so earnest. but.
April 24, 2024
patti smith’s writing is truly one of the most smoothest writings i have ever encountered. it felt so familiar.
“the prospect of boarding a plane without a book produces a wave of panic. the right book can serve as a docent of sorts, setting a tone or even altering the course of a journey.”
“i climb the side of a volcano carved from ice, heat drawn from the well of devotion that is the female heart.”
“a burgeoning routine. awake at seven. café de flore at eight. read until ten. walk to gallimard. journalists. book signing. lunch with the gallimard crew—aurélien, cristelle, duck confit and beans, local café fare. tea in the blue salon, the garden beyond, interviews.”
“it occurs to me that the young look beautiful as they sleep and the old, such as myself, look dead.”
“—i was born beautiful, she blurted, why should i have an ugly life?”
“why do we write? a chorus erupts. because we cannot simply live.”
“the prospect of boarding a plane without a book produces a wave of panic. the right book can serve as a docent of sorts, setting a tone or even altering the course of a journey.”
“i climb the side of a volcano carved from ice, heat drawn from the well of devotion that is the female heart.”
“a burgeoning routine. awake at seven. café de flore at eight. read until ten. walk to gallimard. journalists. book signing. lunch with the gallimard crew—aurélien, cristelle, duck confit and beans, local café fare. tea in the blue salon, the garden beyond, interviews.”
“it occurs to me that the young look beautiful as they sleep and the old, such as myself, look dead.”
“—i was born beautiful, she blurted, why should i have an ugly life?”
“why do we write? a chorus erupts. because we cannot simply live.”
June 2, 2025
Na het lezen van het schitterende Just Kids kreeg ik zin om Patti Smiths literaire kant beter te leren kennen. Dit boekje behoort tot een reeks van (voorlopig?) drie, uitgebracht onder de noemer 'Why I write'. Daaruit las ik reeds de boeiende bijdrage van Karl Ove Knausgård Inadvertent.
Patti Smith doet niet voor Knausgård onder en geeft haar lezers zelfs een intrigerend kortverhaal cadeau dat ook de titel van dit boek draagt: 'Devotion'. Maar eerst schrijft ze in 'How the mind works' over de manier waarop inspiratiebronnen, ontmoetingen, voorwerpen, plaatsen en andere onverwachte invloeden haar constante schrijfdrang kneden en kanaliseren.
Dat gebeurt tijdens een lezingenreis naar Parijs en elders in Frankrijk. Met Café de Flore bij Saint-Germain-des-Prés als ochtendlijke uitvalsbasis en verder de romans van Patrick Modiano, de tuinen van uitgeverij Gallimard waar o.a. Mishima, Genet en Camus ooit rondliepen, het gedachtegoed van Simone Weil en een treinreis naar het zuiden haar schrijfideeën vormgeven.
Albert Camus krijgt nog een extra plekje in het voorlaatste hoofdstuk 'A Dream is not a Dream' waarin Patti Smith beschrijft hoe ze door Camus' dochter wordt uitgenodigd op het familiedomein in Lourmarin. Ze verblijft in Camus' kamer en krijgt de kans om zijn laatste, onvoltooide manuscript - Le premier homme - in originele versie te doorbladeren. Een droom voor haar.
Kortom: Patti Smith blijft me fascineren met haar geïnspireerde schrijfhand en rijke levensloop, dus ik begin meteen aan haar Polaroid/Instagram-jaarkalender A Book of Days.
Patti Smith doet niet voor Knausgård onder en geeft haar lezers zelfs een intrigerend kortverhaal cadeau dat ook de titel van dit boek draagt: 'Devotion'. Maar eerst schrijft ze in 'How the mind works' over de manier waarop inspiratiebronnen, ontmoetingen, voorwerpen, plaatsen en andere onverwachte invloeden haar constante schrijfdrang kneden en kanaliseren.
Dat gebeurt tijdens een lezingenreis naar Parijs en elders in Frankrijk. Met Café de Flore bij Saint-Germain-des-Prés als ochtendlijke uitvalsbasis en verder de romans van Patrick Modiano, de tuinen van uitgeverij Gallimard waar o.a. Mishima, Genet en Camus ooit rondliepen, het gedachtegoed van Simone Weil en een treinreis naar het zuiden haar schrijfideeën vormgeven.
Albert Camus krijgt nog een extra plekje in het voorlaatste hoofdstuk 'A Dream is not a Dream' waarin Patti Smith beschrijft hoe ze door Camus' dochter wordt uitgenodigd op het familiedomein in Lourmarin. Ze verblijft in Camus' kamer en krijgt de kans om zijn laatste, onvoltooide manuscript - Le premier homme - in originele versie te doorbladeren. Een droom voor haar.
Kortom: Patti Smith blijft me fascineren met haar geïnspireerde schrijfhand en rijke levensloop, dus ik begin meteen aan haar Polaroid/Instagram-jaarkalender A Book of Days.
May 1, 2018
This is a remarkable little book in its own way. It's a longish short story called "Devotion" bracketed by opening and closing sections discussing the story's genesis and then some reflections on the act of creative writing, in line with the book's genesis as part of the Why I Write-themed Windham-Campbell lectures at Yale.
It's the opening and closing sections that moved me the most, as a fellow writer and Patti Smith fan--I've even met her on a couple of occasions. The story was less dramatically pleasing than the frame commentary, oddly, but it is also helped a bit by the exposition and reflections surrounding it. It's funny how we read so differently than we write--how modernism's techniques have taught us to hide our concepts in actions and symbols that only make our ideas more cloudy to readers. But that, I suppose, is in-line with Longinus's definition of the sublime: Ars celare artem est. Still, it makes me feel naive as a reader when I don't see the obvious idea in the narrative because I'm distracted by its illusion of reality. (And, oy vey, Patti, enough with the Rimbaud already!)
The final reflections on writing on the last two pages are well worth the thirteen pounds Sterling I paid for this at London's Rough Trade East and the time I spent reading it at the 10 Bells pub while hiding out from the rain--a pub once frequented by ladies of the evening, at least two of whom were dismembered by Jack the Ripper's carving knife. (Forgive me, it was my first trip to London and my head is still abuzz with the city's sights, sounds, and history.) I loved Patti's declaration that a work of art/literature is a "call to action." I'm pretty sure she means a call to answer the work with another work, to write oneself, but I think it's also a very wise generality as I do think art should have an inspirational effect--whether it be revolutionary, meditative, social, conceptual, or, as Patti intends, inspirational--that is, tending toward further artistic work. her sentiment reminded me of Susan Sontag's famous adage that she didn't write for an audience but rather "Because there is literature."
I wonder if male authors are so generous to those authors who have inspired them to write. Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence points out how ungenerous--even hostile--literary homage can sometimes be. Patti calls this call to action's result "A guiltless sacrilege." Besides being a beautifully phrased phrase, her humility before other great works of literature is quite winning. Again I wondered if male authors don't feel it's more of a right to write than a sacrilege, that they are called in order to burn through the history of literature with their own words. Dunno, I don't often read writers on writing, and my reading is tending quite heavily these days to female authors, but I will keep an eye on this attitude in the future.
It's the opening and closing sections that moved me the most, as a fellow writer and Patti Smith fan--I've even met her on a couple of occasions. The story was less dramatically pleasing than the frame commentary, oddly, but it is also helped a bit by the exposition and reflections surrounding it. It's funny how we read so differently than we write--how modernism's techniques have taught us to hide our concepts in actions and symbols that only make our ideas more cloudy to readers. But that, I suppose, is in-line with Longinus's definition of the sublime: Ars celare artem est. Still, it makes me feel naive as a reader when I don't see the obvious idea in the narrative because I'm distracted by its illusion of reality. (And, oy vey, Patti, enough with the Rimbaud already!)
The final reflections on writing on the last two pages are well worth the thirteen pounds Sterling I paid for this at London's Rough Trade East and the time I spent reading it at the 10 Bells pub while hiding out from the rain--a pub once frequented by ladies of the evening, at least two of whom were dismembered by Jack the Ripper's carving knife. (Forgive me, it was my first trip to London and my head is still abuzz with the city's sights, sounds, and history.) I loved Patti's declaration that a work of art/literature is a "call to action." I'm pretty sure she means a call to answer the work with another work, to write oneself, but I think it's also a very wise generality as I do think art should have an inspirational effect--whether it be revolutionary, meditative, social, conceptual, or, as Patti intends, inspirational--that is, tending toward further artistic work. her sentiment reminded me of Susan Sontag's famous adage that she didn't write for an audience but rather "Because there is literature."
I wonder if male authors are so generous to those authors who have inspired them to write. Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence points out how ungenerous--even hostile--literary homage can sometimes be. Patti calls this call to action's result "A guiltless sacrilege." Besides being a beautifully phrased phrase, her humility before other great works of literature is quite winning. Again I wondered if male authors don't feel it's more of a right to write than a sacrilege, that they are called in order to burn through the history of literature with their own words. Dunno, I don't often read writers on writing, and my reading is tending quite heavily these days to female authors, but I will keep an eye on this attitude in the future.
March 26, 2025
4,5* Kurzer, aber intensiver Blick auf den Schreib- und Denkprozess von Patti Smith mit einer berührenden Novelle im Mittelpunkt.
September 25, 2017
While at the Harvard Book Store last week, I decided to console myself with the fact I couldn't make yet another trip in two weeks' time back to the city to see Patti Smith live, by purchasing her new book. I adore her, but in this case, I should have purchased a remainder hard cover copy of my beloved "M Train" instead of her newest. I was looking for this to be "M Train 2.0," but instead got an odd little 100-page book divided in three parts.
Part I is her recounting a trip to France; Part II is a short story about a young Eastern European ice skater, which, while the writing was beautiful poetry, was kind of icky; and Part III is titled "Why I Write," but a visit to Camus home. I want to hear about the process, sitting in New York cafes drinking coffee from early morning, hands covered in ink because she writes things by hand. No, that was "M Train" (are you getting that I loved that book?).
Even though I am lukewarm on this book, I still sat with pen in hand, underlying sentences that sometimes would take my breath away.
"Closing my eyes, I envision the tip of a glacier and slide into an intimate hot spring surrounded by calls of impenetrable ice."
"Why do we write? A chorus erupts.
"Because we cannot simply live."
And found a kindred spirit.
"The taxi arrives too quickly as I realize I haven't yet chosen what books to take. The prospects of boarding a plan without a book produces a wave of panic. The right book can serve as a docent of sorts, setting a tone or even altering the course of a journey."
Part I is her recounting a trip to France; Part II is a short story about a young Eastern European ice skater, which, while the writing was beautiful poetry, was kind of icky; and Part III is titled "Why I Write," but a visit to Camus home. I want to hear about the process, sitting in New York cafes drinking coffee from early morning, hands covered in ink because she writes things by hand. No, that was "M Train" (are you getting that I loved that book?).
Even though I am lukewarm on this book, I still sat with pen in hand, underlying sentences that sometimes would take my breath away.
"Closing my eyes, I envision the tip of a glacier and slide into an intimate hot spring surrounded by calls of impenetrable ice."
"Why do we write? A chorus erupts.
"Because we cannot simply live."
And found a kindred spirit.
"The taxi arrives too quickly as I realize I haven't yet chosen what books to take. The prospects of boarding a plan without a book produces a wave of panic. The right book can serve as a docent of sorts, setting a tone or even altering the course of a journey."
May 9, 2019
No início, a visita de Patti Smith ao seu editor francês (Gallimard).
No fim, a visita à casa de Albert Camus e as emoções de Patti ao ver, tocar, folhear o manuscrito, inacabado, de O Primeiro Homem.
No meio, o conto — Devoção — sobre uma adolescente que sonhava ser patinadora no gelo.
Não gosto muito da Patti Smith ficcionista; prefiro-a quando relata as suas deambulações pelo mundo real, enquanto fala de livros, e escritores, de música, de cinema... de si, dos seus pensamentos, sentimentos, sonhos...
Qual o sonho? Escrever alguma coisa sublime, que seja melhor do que eu e que justifique as minhas provações e os meus erros.
No fim, a visita à casa de Albert Camus e as emoções de Patti ao ver, tocar, folhear o manuscrito, inacabado, de O Primeiro Homem.
No meio, o conto — Devoção — sobre uma adolescente que sonhava ser patinadora no gelo.
Não gosto muito da Patti Smith ficcionista; prefiro-a quando relata as suas deambulações pelo mundo real, enquanto fala de livros, e escritores, de música, de cinema... de si, dos seus pensamentos, sentimentos, sonhos...
Qual o sonho? Escrever alguma coisa sublime, que seja melhor do que eu e que justifique as minhas provações e os meus erros.
September 3, 2017
Haunting..beautiful..
Read
June 1, 2018Tomo prestados estos párrafos de Patti porque no creo que haya palabras mejores para describir esta Devoción :
Las palabras que tenía ante mí eran elegantes, despiadadas. Me vibraban las manos. Imbuida de confianza, sentí la urgencia de levantarme de un brinco, subir las escaleras, cerrar la pesada puerta que había sido de Camus (Patti), sentarme delante de mi propio taco de folios y empezar mi propio principio.
¿Cuál es la tarea? Componer una obra que comunique en distintos niveles, como en una parábola, desprovista de la mancha del ingenio. ¿Cuál es el sueño? Escribir algo bueno, que sea mejor de lo que soy yo, algo que justificaría mis intentos e indiscreciones. ¿Por qué escribo? Mi dedo, como un lápiz óptico, traza la palabra en el aire vacío. Un acertijo familiar que me he planteado desde la juventud, algo que me privaba del juego, de los amigos, y del valle del amor, presa de las palabras, siempre un poco desplazada. ¿Por qué escribimos? Porque no podemos limitarnos a vivir.
Y añado: ¿Por qué leemos? Pues por lo mismo.
Gracias de nuevo Patti.
Las palabras que tenía ante mí eran elegantes, despiadadas. Me vibraban las manos. Imbuida de confianza, sentí la urgencia de levantarme de un brinco, subir las escaleras, cerrar la pesada puerta que había sido de Camus (Patti), sentarme delante de mi propio taco de folios y empezar mi propio principio.
¿Cuál es la tarea? Componer una obra que comunique en distintos niveles, como en una parábola, desprovista de la mancha del ingenio. ¿Cuál es el sueño? Escribir algo bueno, que sea mejor de lo que soy yo, algo que justificaría mis intentos e indiscreciones. ¿Por qué escribo? Mi dedo, como un lápiz óptico, traza la palabra en el aire vacío. Un acertijo familiar que me he planteado desde la juventud, algo que me privaba del juego, de los amigos, y del valle del amor, presa de las palabras, siempre un poco desplazada. ¿Por qué escribimos? Porque no podemos limitarnos a vivir.
Y añado: ¿Por qué leemos? Pues por lo mismo.
Gracias de nuevo Patti.
September 10, 2018
If only all of her musings and introspection on the mystical processes of birthing a piece of writing could have produced something worth reading. The story "Devotion" encapsulated within the book of the same title, does nothing to elucidate the richness or complexity of human experience, and lays characters flat, who are nihilistic at best. I could feel nothing for them because they could only produce a shallow and passive expression of human feeling. The pieces of the book hang loosely related, in a nightmarish void with very little warmth, purpose, or soul.
Also, there are enough real-life stories of child abuse to haunt us for eternity. Why fictionalize a story that offers no purpose, and refuses to acknowledge one of our greatest human aspects, that is to hope against all hope? Such a disappointment.
Also, there are enough real-life stories of child abuse to haunt us for eternity. Why fictionalize a story that offers no purpose, and refuses to acknowledge one of our greatest human aspects, that is to hope against all hope? Such a disappointment.
September 21, 2017
It was so beautiful, delicate, passionate and lovely. It's more of a novella, so it's quite easy to finish in a day. Does she ever write a book that's not perfect? Maybe she'd adopt me?
June 12, 2022
Dedication in Estonian
Review of the Loomingu Raamatukogu paperback edition (April 2022) translated by Paula Taberland from the English language original Devotion published by Yale University Press (Sept 2017)
[4.5, but bumped up to 5 due to Estonian connection]
I regularly watch the webpages of Estonian publisher Kultuurileht for their current translations published under the Loomingu Raamatukogu (LR) imprint. The 100 to 150 pg. average length of an LR paperback makes them especially convenient and manageable to read in my heritage language. I can even run across translated books which are not available to read in English, so those can be interesting discoveries. It is also convenient when the translation is from English so that I will likely have easy access to the original for comparison.
When I saw the recent translation of poet/musician Patti Smith's Dedication I snapped it up immediately and then I was even more surprised when I opened its first page and read*:
She reminisces about her first time travel to Paris with her sister in 1969 and takes pains to visit various historical sites and gravestones of past writers. These are often documented with black & white photographs in the book. As she travels she is reading Simone Weil (1909-1943) and thinking back to the Estonian film that she watched, along with an ice-skating competition with a young 16-year-old competitor.
Patti Smith in Paris 1969 with colorized version. Image sourced from Reddit.
The middle section novella is a fictional piece created out of all the various non-fictional occurrences and associations. Smith imagines an Estonian girl having escaped Stalin's purges who comes to live in Western Europe where she becomes the lover of an older man who mentors her ice-skating dreams.
I enjoyed Dedication immensely and especially appreciated translator Paula Taberland's Afterword with its summary of Patti Smith's career and especially of her published work, of which I was previously only familiar with the terrific memoir Just Kids (2010).
Trivia and Links
There is an Estonian language interview with first time literary translator Paula Taberland where she discusses the translation process and her mentoring by Estonian poet & LR editorial board member Doris Kareva which you can read here. Non-Estonian readers will have to turn on their web translators.
The Loomingu Raamatukogu (The Creation Library) is a modestly priced Estonian literary journal which was initially published weekly (from 1957 to 1994) and which now publishes 40 issues a year as of 1995. It is a great source for discovery as its relatively cheap prices (currently 3 to 5€ per issue) allow for access to a multitude of international writers in Estonian translation and of shorter works by Estonian authors themselves. These include poetry, theatre, essays, short stories, novellas and novels (the lengthier works are usually parceled out over several issues).
For a complete listing of all works issued to date by Loomingu Raamatukogu see Estonian Wikipedia here.
* I read the Estonian version as below, but I'm using the original English in the above review:
Review of the Loomingu Raamatukogu paperback edition (April 2022) translated by Paula Taberland from the English language original Devotion published by Yale University Press (Sept 2017)
[4.5, but bumped up to 5 due to Estonian connection]
I regularly watch the webpages of Estonian publisher Kultuurileht for their current translations published under the Loomingu Raamatukogu (LR) imprint. The 100 to 150 pg. average length of an LR paperback makes them especially convenient and manageable to read in my heritage language. I can even run across translated books which are not available to read in English, so those can be interesting discoveries. It is also convenient when the translation is from English so that I will likely have easy access to the original for comparison.
When I saw the recent translation of poet/musician Patti Smith's Dedication I snapped it up immediately and then I was even more surprised when I opened its first page and read*:
Somehow, searching for something else, I stumbled upon a trailer of a film called 'Risttuules', translated as 'In the Crosswind'. It is Martti Helde’s requiem for thousands of Estonians who suffered mass deportation to Siberian collective farms in the spring of 1941, when Stalin’s troops rounded them up, separated families, and herded them into cattle cars. Death and exile, their fate reassigned. - excerpt from DedicationDedication (2017) has 3 sections as translated in this Estonian version. The first and third non-fiction sections are framing a middle section fictional novella. The framing sections describe Smith's travel to France for a promotional interviews and appearances with her French language publisher and then her further local travel to visit the home of Albert Camus's (1913-1960) family.
She reminisces about her first time travel to Paris with her sister in 1969 and takes pains to visit various historical sites and gravestones of past writers. These are often documented with black & white photographs in the book. As she travels she is reading Simone Weil (1909-1943) and thinking back to the Estonian film that she watched, along with an ice-skating competition with a young 16-year-old competitor.
Patti Smith in Paris 1969 with colorized version. Image sourced from Reddit.
The middle section novella is a fictional piece created out of all the various non-fictional occurrences and associations. Smith imagines an Estonian girl having escaped Stalin's purges who comes to live in Western Europe where she becomes the lover of an older man who mentors her ice-skating dreams.
I enjoyed Dedication immensely and especially appreciated translator Paula Taberland's Afterword with its summary of Patti Smith's career and especially of her published work, of which I was previously only familiar with the terrific memoir Just Kids (2010).
Trivia and Links
There is an Estonian language interview with first time literary translator Paula Taberland where she discusses the translation process and her mentoring by Estonian poet & LR editorial board member Doris Kareva which you can read here. Non-Estonian readers will have to turn on their web translators.
The Loomingu Raamatukogu (The Creation Library) is a modestly priced Estonian literary journal which was initially published weekly (from 1957 to 1994) and which now publishes 40 issues a year as of 1995. It is a great source for discovery as its relatively cheap prices (currently 3 to 5€ per issue) allow for access to a multitude of international writers in Estonian translation and of shorter works by Estonian authors themselves. These include poetry, theatre, essays, short stories, novellas and novels (the lengthier works are usually parceled out over several issues).
For a complete listing of all works issued to date by Loomingu Raamatukogu see Estonian Wikipedia here.
* I read the Estonian version as below, but I'm using the original English in the above review:
Otsides sootuks midagi muud, komistasin juhtumisi filmi "Risttuules" treilerile. Tegemist on Martti Helde reekviemiga tuhandetele eestlastele, kes langesid massiküüditamise ohvriks ja lõpetasid Siberi kolhoosides kui Stalini sõdurid nad 1941. aasta varasuvel kinni võtsid, pereliikmed üksteisest lahutasid ja loomavagunitesse ajasid. Surm ja pagendus, saatus pea peale pööratud.
February 18, 2018
Devotion é um livro sobre processo de escrita. Para responder a pergunta "Why I write?" Patti Smith executa uma jornada sobre como ela escreve e o que a inspira. Nada muito novo para quem já leu seus livros anteriores mas sempre aquele gosto de voltar para casa que os livros dela tem. Na primeira parte, chamada "How the mind works", acompanhamos uma escritora que precisa escrever mas não consegue encontrar o texto. A epígrafe já deixa evidente que a inspiração é uma parte importante do trabalho de criação mas não como 'um ficar esperando pela musa' e sim algo que acontece inadvertidamente em meio às horas de trabalho. E o trabalho no caso de quem cria não é somente ficar em frente à página em branco da tela ou do caderno mas prestar atenção aos detalhes do dia a dia, aos sonhos, às conversas mais banais, aos filmes que se vê, livros, séries. Patti é convidada para falar na França e seu voo é adiantado. Ela precisa correr, arrumar a mala e, com isso, não tem muito tempo de escolher o livro que vai levar na viagem. Um trabalho acadêmico sobre Simone Weil pula em sua frente e é ele que a acompanha.
Tudo isso e o cenário do filme estoniano Risttuules vão compor o cenário da segunda parte, Devotion, a criação em si, um conto fictício. É minha parte menos favorita do livro mas mesmo assim funciona como um reflexo do que veio antes. E, a meu ver, mais um degrau para o ato de criar: o fracasso também faz parte dele.
Na última parte 'A dream is not a dream', Patti conta sobre o convite que recebeu para visitar a casa de Camus numa cidade no interior da França. Ela fica um pouco na dúvida, teme se sentir estranha com pessoas desconhecidas - <3 - mas vai mesmo assim. A grande surpresa da visita é a possibilidade de ver um manuscrito do escritor argelino. Enquanto ela folheia aquelas páginas se sente convocada a fazer algo com aquilo. Arte não é para ser mantida em um patamar do sagrado, ela folheia aquelas páginas com cuidado e respeito, mas vendo a organização do pensamento de Camus ela quer fazer algo com aquilo. Quer também criar. A obra de arte é o que desperta em nós não a vontade de contemplação mas a vontade de também criar algo. Esse é o verdadeiro sentido da devoção.
"What is the dream? To write something fine, that would be better than I am, and that would justify my trials and indiscretions. To offer proof, through a scramble of words, that God exists".
Sempre vai ser absurdamente incrível pra mim como ela consegue em um trecho do livro falar sobre chorar de felicidade e no momento seguinte dizer: pessoas jovens quando dormem parece que estão sonhando, pessoas velhas parecem estar mortas.
Tudo isso e o cenário do filme estoniano Risttuules vão compor o cenário da segunda parte, Devotion, a criação em si, um conto fictício. É minha parte menos favorita do livro mas mesmo assim funciona como um reflexo do que veio antes. E, a meu ver, mais um degrau para o ato de criar: o fracasso também faz parte dele.
Na última parte 'A dream is not a dream', Patti conta sobre o convite que recebeu para visitar a casa de Camus numa cidade no interior da França. Ela fica um pouco na dúvida, teme se sentir estranha com pessoas desconhecidas - <3 - mas vai mesmo assim. A grande surpresa da visita é a possibilidade de ver um manuscrito do escritor argelino. Enquanto ela folheia aquelas páginas se sente convocada a fazer algo com aquilo. Arte não é para ser mantida em um patamar do sagrado, ela folheia aquelas páginas com cuidado e respeito, mas vendo a organização do pensamento de Camus ela quer fazer algo com aquilo. Quer também criar. A obra de arte é o que desperta em nós não a vontade de contemplação mas a vontade de também criar algo. Esse é o verdadeiro sentido da devoção.
"What is the dream? To write something fine, that would be better than I am, and that would justify my trials and indiscretions. To offer proof, through a scramble of words, that God exists".
Sempre vai ser absurdamente incrível pra mim como ela consegue em um trecho do livro falar sobre chorar de felicidade e no momento seguinte dizer: pessoas jovens quando dormem parece que estão sonhando, pessoas velhas parecem estar mortas.
May 20, 2023
contains some singularly gorgeous lines, but definitely not for me. the vast majority of smith’s (copious) references flew over my head, the fictive interlude was unsurprising and a little too predictable (lonesome teenage girl is totally perfect and talented and intellectual aside from one small defect [tragic family / origins], finds herself preyed upon, then kills her predator in a fit of ambiguous desire/detestation), and the overall effect was more flowery and high-flown than i can usually handle in one sitting. a “why i write” take that was too dated/inaccessible for me to enjoy. sorryyyy💔 2.6/5. love the few lines i highlighted tho:
We would all like to believe that we came from nowhere but ourselves, every gesture is our own.
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