Sunday, June 28, 2009
Gorgeous quilts
This woman in Roumania makes stunning trapunto quilts, and she has a lottery for a free copy of her new book. Guess what, if you post an mention on your blog, you get to enter. So here it is.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Rediscovering poetry
We are having our Russian cleaning lady, her husband, and grandson over for Shabbas dinner tomorrow night. Her Hebrew is pretty weak (she says his is better), so I dragged my 20-year-old Russian textbook out. It's pretty rusty, but coming back, like, uh, figures emerging from the fog. So then I looked up a poem we had to memorize second year, by Anna Akhmatova.
The Muse
When, at night, I’m waiting her arrival,
Life it seems, is hanging by a thread.
Glory, youth and freedom cannot rival
The joy she brings me, with a flute in hand.
She enters, and before I can discern her,
She stares at me with an attentive eye.
“Were you,” I ask, “the cause of the Inferno
For Dante?” – And she answers: “I!”
This was the second translation I found, the first was horrible. Similarly inspired, Adina asked to find Wordsworth's Daffodils, which she read in English. Mr. Carey had us memorize this in sixth grade.
"Daffodils" (1804)
I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
I also pulled out a book I bought in my early days in Israel of modern Hebrew poetry, with English translation. Hebrew's better than the Russian, but still not totally there yet.
Wishing everyone a great Shabbas.
The Muse
When, at night, I’m waiting her arrival,
Life it seems, is hanging by a thread.
Glory, youth and freedom cannot rival
The joy she brings me, with a flute in hand.
She enters, and before I can discern her,
She stares at me with an attentive eye.
“Were you,” I ask, “the cause of the Inferno
For Dante?” – And she answers: “I!”
This was the second translation I found, the first was horrible. Similarly inspired, Adina asked to find Wordsworth's Daffodils, which she read in English. Mr. Carey had us memorize this in sixth grade.
"Daffodils" (1804)
I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
I also pulled out a book I bought in my early days in Israel of modern Hebrew poetry, with English translation. Hebrew's better than the Russian, but still not totally there yet.
Wishing everyone a great Shabbas.
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