Bottom's Dream discussion
Reading Zettel's Traum
>
Reading the damn'd thing
date
newest »
newest »
I'm working my 5th weekend in a row on a project, so while procrastinating I did a little research. Here is a relevant bit of intel I picked up:From Arno Schmidt ' s Zettel's Traum: an Analysis
The book breaks down into 8 chapters or "books" with a particular theme. In some cases I just noted the Poe work associated. The full text can be found on page 16 of the Google preview of the book.
Book 1- discusses Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
Book 2- Journal of Julius Rodman
Book 3- Domain of Arnheim
Book 4- No Poe specified, but fun with puns. Buckle up.
Book 5- No Poe. True love and it's perils.
Book 6- Motif of voyeurism and Poe's coprophilia
Book 7- Walpurgis fantasies- discussion of the habits and perversions of the population of the fictitious village of "Scortleben"
Book 8- the wrapup and the end of the dream as morning arrives. Explores the motif of auto eroticism in Poe and analysis of Poe's prose poem Heureka.
Cannabitch is a Cannabis bitch? Modern interpretation.And luteus means gluteus maximus.
Very comprehensible. My BT / ZT is coming this week probably.
While there's no comparison with the heft of the physical edition, I'm excited to report that I am currently perusing a pdf of BD. First impressions:The typesetting is quite lovely, and was done by none other than John E. Woods himself.
A nice feature is the inclusion--in the margins (margin of margins)--of the page numbers corresponding to the first edition.
As we all know, this is extremely dense writing, even more so than I've typically come to expect from Schmidt--which is saying something. Still, it hardly seems "unreadable"--daunting! but not unreadable. I recently had the opportunity to spend some time with a facsimile of Schmidt's annotated copy of the Wake, and I think he really was more concerned with legibility than Joyce was. (His observations throughout the Wake, as best as I could tell, are evidence of him being someone who believes in the work of reading every bit as much as he believes in the work of writing.)
My last first impression is the brief, exceedingly modest "after=wart" by Woods. Anyone who can accomplish something of this magnitude, and then end with a simple hope that any errors he has made not detract from the grandeur of the work--well, the man's really something. What more can be said?
Guys, this is a big, beautiful, relentless book. One month from today, and it cannot come soon enough!
Dalkey tweeted about the availability of the pdf and gave an email address for those interested in reviewing.
Don wrote: "Dalkey tweeted about the availability of the pdf and gave an email address for those interested in reviewing."Thanks Don. I emailed and they hooked me up with a pdf today.
Joshua wrote: "What's the first word?"https://twitter.com/Dalkey_Archive/st...
Hope that gets you to a photo of the first page. As far as my first thought, it's definitely jumping in at the deep end.
Thanks James, for the Twitter-tease! So maybe the first word is: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. I should have guessed as much. The Anna mooh-mooh calls to mind the moocows of Joyce's APOTAAYM and the mysterious Sir Teat'on perhaps a distant relation of Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, of the first page of FW.
Are the steers supplying the margin notes for the first page, you think?
Thanks for the picture link James.Here's the first part in German (above; taken from here) and English if you dare to compare.
[click on image to enlarge]
Matt wrote: "Thanks for the picture link James.Here's the first part in German (above; taken from here) and English if you dare to compare.
[click on image to enlarge]
Thanks Matt! My translation skills get taxed by the tweets I get from FC Bayern Munich in the original.
Joshua, I thought of the moocows too.
"
James wrote: "Joshua wrote: "What's the first word?"https://twitter.com/Dalkey_Archive/st...
Hope that gets you to a photo of the first page. As far as my first thought, it's definitely ju..."
Thanks for the link James - it gets me excited, but at the same time worried. I have prepared a lot for the arrival of the book, reference materials, new notebooks, a place to house the behemoth etc.
This is from the untranslated. It might be fun to apply to the text above:The majority of the pages are divided into three columns. The main story is in the middle. On either side there are quotations, notes, tangential observations, doodles, background noises. Judging by the first pages, it is difficult to determine the exact function of either marginal column. This is what Volker Langbehn has to say on this account:
Discussions of the writings take place to the left of the main column. In addition, the four discussants narrate stories about Poe’s life and insert quotes from his texts […] The right column contains extensive quotations from literature, myth, and devotional texts, and other references such as radio and TV news or dictionary definitions and translations.
However, even at a cursory glance it is evident that Arno Schmidt does not strictly keep to this arrangement. One pretty soon realises that it is not a good idea to think about inviolable rules when dealing with such a text as ZT.
Got my copy today. Heavy as hell ; fat ; tall ; intimidating. Haven't really given it a good once over yet. But it's a beauty. Not sure when I'll actually start a determined reading of it. Want to finish up a few things first.
Was hoping for a trophy shot, but in all seriousness, I am with Geoff, I will most likely wait until next weekend to begin.
Christopher wrote: "There almost deserves to be a page between anticipation and reading the damn'd thing devoted to apprehension"We could rename the other thread Anticipation=Apprehension. This thread was supposed to have to do with organizing some kind of Group Entity Reading Group Kind Of Thing. But if the organizing of some kind of Group Entity Reading Group Kind Of Thing is going to happen from my end, it'll have to wait until October.
Meanwhile --;> Anticipation=Anxiety=Apprehension Ahoy!!!
Christopher, Are the calculation essays available in English?
James wrote: "Christopher, Are the calculation essays available in English?"
Yes, published in the Review of Contemporary Fiction: http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/product/...
Don wrote: "James wrote: "Christopher, Are the calculation essays available in English?"
Yes, published in the Review of Contemporary Fiction: http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/product/..."
Which is unfortunately basically unavailable through any sources.
Don wrote: "James wrote: "Christopher, Are the calculation essays available in English?"
Yes, published in the Review of Contemporary Fiction: http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/product/..."
I knew it'd be too much to expect a reprint of this rare gem. I think this was back in the day when RCF was still mimeo'd off of typewritten pages. Those things are pretty cool. And fitting for Schmidt of course.
I reached out to Dalkey about it and if they had any spares or planned rerelease and never got a response.
Nick wrote: "I reached out to Dalkey about it and if they had any spares or planned rerelease and never got a response."I bent their ear too and got only a faint acknowledgement. I'm sure they've got a photocopier/scanner somewheres in their offices...
For better=worse I've got a folder up now for discussing the text. F(r)eely continue to use this thread for general discussions or discussions 'bout how to organize the grup=reading of this thing....
Nick wrote: "I reached out to Dalkey about it and if they had any spares or planned rerelease and never got a response."Oh yes ; and we've got a thread for this RCF too ::
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
So here's something I was thinking about last night: in the third book there are a couple of Poe's poems presented side by side, after which is the comment ">>Fantastic Translation! -<<". However, Woods has obviously included the poems in their original English, so not only are they now not translated, it's not like Woods has translated those translations back to English (though one "=" does end up included).Now, this is a book about translation, in which Schmidt is including Poe passages (which, in German, would be in translation) throughout - do we, as English readers, lose something by not being able to see Schmidt's translation?
I know that something is always lost in translation, but in a work about translation - that originally included examples of translation - it just feels like there is something larger lost.
If those translations of Poe's poems are as good as AS translation of Pym (the only Schmidt-translation I read so far) I'd say you definitely loose something.I included a few passages of Pym from Poe and Schmidt in my review [but didn't (couldn't!) translate the German back to English] https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Surely someone can ILL the RCF issue and scan the articles.
Matt wrote: "If those translations of Poe's poems are as good as AS translation of Pym (the only Schmidt-translation I read so far) I'd say you definitely loose something.I included a few passages of Pym from ..."
Yeah, that's roughly what I was thinking. It bums me out that Woods' Afterword is only 2 pages long, and doesn't do much to discuss the translation process. I'd love a longform look at the choices he made in translating it back to English.
I put in an ILL request for the Calculations essay from RCF and received a pdf within a day or two.
I'm also pretty sure I've got some hard copies of the Calculations essays I made years ago squirreled away somewheres...
Grrr...after getting a few pages into the reading...i got sidetracked by Hurricane Matthew and work. Now that power is restored and work has settled down...i can finnally get about 3 days uninterrupted reading in.
Whaaaaat?!!!How Long to Read Bottom's Dream (German Literature)
https://www.howlongtoreadthis.com/boo...
ReemK10 (Paper Pills) wrote: "Whaaaaat?!!!How Long to Read Bottom's Dream (German Literature)
https://www.howlongtoreadthis.com/boo..."
Approximately 381,480 words
The number I've heard is something like 1.3 million words.
Internet junk.
Internet junk indeed, as I said on Twitter, how fast can you run the Guggenheim? 'Tis not a race, & anyone who treats it as such (in my eyes) is automatically disqualified.
I see a lot of new members flowing in ; witch is great! But not a lot of activity in the Threads ;; witch is perfectly fine. Plenty of places to remark or not remark, to update or not update on gr and the wider=internetz. I'll see about getting Folders set up for the remaining chapters one of these days very soon.Again, as to how all this is still supposed to work :: if you've got something you want to comment on or ask about, CREATE a Thread in the appropriate Chapter Folder with a header indexed with the page numbers like :: BD80/ZT78 ;; and add a word or two about what your comment is related to. Like ::
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
It only sounds complicated!
Meanwhile, whether commenting in this Group or knot ;; please do enjoy your Dream!
a great quality pd=eff for those who missed the boat on getting the dam=thing cheap back in 2016::!https://3lib.net/book/5397090/623b5c
Just in case anyone's interested: my group has been reading BD for a half-year. We have finished book I, and we start Book V in a couple of weeks. If you'd like to join email me, jelkins@saic.edu
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
["So you went to The Grappa/Just to give it a try" --Zappa, Broken Hearts Are For Assholes]
I have no idea how to organize the reading of this thing. There will be no schedule. And atm, I've no knowledge of the textual divisions (chapters, etc). And so but since the pages are so damn big, I think we'll use them as our Basic UNIT. Got something to say about something on a page -- start a thread with some kind of reasonable title that includes the page number (first, maybe, to make thread sorting easier) and something about the topic you're posting about. We'll have to run with this a bit to see how it works out.