Mezy is entirely new to me, Borges an old friend. I was very impressed by Andrew Hurley's translation of Ficciones. Any thread that starts with Borges and goes on to mention Hardy, Herbert, E. A. Robinson, and Vikram Seth has been spun into a golden thread, which is both a legal term of art and a prized addition to fine embroidery. The comments were also invaluable, ore from the Comstock Lode.
Does anyone know this masterpiece by Seth?
All you who sleep tonight
Far from the one you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above,
Know that you're not alone,
That all men share your tears,
Some for two nights or one
And some for all their years.
Or this passage from Hardy?
Amid the happy people of my time
Who work their love's fulfillment I appear
Numb as a vane that cankers on its point,
True to the wind that kissed ere canker came.
The brilliant critic R.P. Blackmur has a chapter on Hardy in "Language as Gesture," a primer on modern poetry. Among at least a dozen great essays, "Lord Tennyson's Scissors" is the nonpareil, the ne plus ultra.
Last edited by Tim McGrath; 05-01-2020 at 02:43 PM.
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