Now That it's Now The New Directions Blog
Now That it's Now The New Directions Blog
For all of the false-positive, nonsensical results that Google Alerts produce, there are always the fascinating discoveries that we're pointed to with great appreciation. Take, for example, this post by Nicholas Mirzoeff, an NYU professor, author, and the creator of a blog where he posts daily observations about Occupy movements around the world.
Writing about the situation in Greece back in January, he evoked Sophokles' Antigone, along with its reinterpretations and allusions to it, most recently in Alexis: A Greek Tragedy.
How do you countervisualize when your goal is not to mow down the other side in the street but to catalyze a sense of alienation into social transformation? In 'Alexis', a cross historical identification of the abandoned body of Alexis was made with that of Polynices, Antigone’s brother for whom she sacrifices herself. The widespread A for Anarchy in Exarchia was read as also signifying Antigone. Giorgio Agamben’s question: “what life is worth being lived?” is understood as a reading of Antigone’s refusal to submit to Creon’s law and the current questioning of ways of being.
The square was visualized as the interface of four projects:
• The interface of the ancient text of 'Antigone' with Brecht’s interpretation and the historical legacies of the theme in Greece
• The multi-year performance of 'Antigone' by Motus [the Italian theater group the performed 'Alexis']
• The already “historical” events of 2008, an event already forgotten by the media when the group began to investigate them in 2010
• The moment of Occupy, from Tahrir to OWS and beyond
Several months later, Mirzoeff received his own alert, this one from Amazon, letting him know that Anne Carson's translation of Antigone, called Antigonick, had been published. He promptly read it and composed the post linked to above. Interepreting someone else's interpretations is always a tricky endeavour, but the results are thoroughly thought provoking. To wit:
*All information in brackets is mine, added for clarification's sake.
Alex Tsiras of Syriza said of Greece “we are going directly to hell,” meaning a living death underground. Which is what happened to Antigone. As Carson reminds us, the myth has power today because it still affects us. She uses words like 'anarchy' where the standard translation uses “unruly.” She talks of the “state of exception.” How to measure that?
In the nick. In the nick of time. By Nick.
Eurydike, Creon’s wife, mother of Haimon who Antigone was to marry, has famously few lines in Sophocles. One speech, five lines.
Carson has her speak much longer, with a riff on Virginia Woolf. Then she asks a question about Antigone [formatting has been altered; Carson hand lettered the text and it's impossible to properly convey the aesthetic online]:
'But how can she deny the rule to which she is an exception? is she AUOTIMMUNE? No she is not. Have you heard the expression THE NICK OF TIME? What is a nick?
What indeed? The OED gives us an astonishingly long entry. It refers to a notch, a cut, a groove, whether in a machine, a tool, wood or an animal. It can refer to the vagina, as in various Jacobean dramas cited by OED. Then it is also the precise moment, later the nick of time. It is essential, what is aimed at. You can also go to the nick, a jail or prison, and be beset by Old Nick, the devil.
At the end of the play, Nick [a character in Carson's translation, described as 'a mute part (always onstage, he measures things)] still on stage measuring. Measuring the collapse of autoimmunity, the collapse of debt’s capital, the capitals of debt.
That's just a sample. To truly appreciate Mirzoeff's insights, you'll have to read the entire post.
Head over to Slate to read the entirety of Patti Smith's wonderful introduction to Albertine Sarrazin's Asrtagal.
ND editor Michael Barron interviewed Elaine Lustig for Bomb's blog. Read it here.
May 2013 News from New Directions
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In this week's issue of The New Yorker, you can read an excerpt from The Unknown University entitled "Mexican Manifesto". Enjoy.
Lina Meruane interviews Spanish author Enrique Vila-Matas in the current issue of BOMB. Read it here.
Congratulations to Enrique Vila-Matas, whose novel Dublinesque is on the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Shortlist.
While in Denmark last August for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's Literature Festival, César Aira sat down to discuss his "ideal fairy tale." Watch it here.
Rebecca Ariel Porte, in a beautiful essay written for the Los Angeles Review of Books, dicusses Susan Howe's Sorting Facts: Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker, addressing Chris Marker's films, as well. Definitely worth a read — here.
In one of the most creative reviews we've seen in a while, Bookslut's Lightsey Darst discusses all four collections in the first set of New Directions Poetry Pamphlets. Enjoy it here.
Calling it "breathatkingly subversive" in a review for the New York Review of Books, Yasmine El Rashidi discusses That Smell's English debut. Read it here.
Saying that the reading experience comes with a "sad sweetness," Vol. 1 Brooklyn dives into The Bridge Over the Neroch & Other Works, a newly translated collection by Leonid Tsypkin. Read it here.
Writing for Bookslut, Christopher Merkel reviews the 65th anniversary edition of the classic modernist text. Read it here.
Writing for The Washington Post, Scott Esposito reviewed our new edition of Queneau's Exercises in Style. Read it here.
In recent episode of Marfa Public Radio's "Talk at Ten", DeWitt read from and discussed Lightning Rods. You can listen to the entire program here.
The finalist shortlist for the annual Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction was recently announced, and Helen DeWitt's Lightning Rods is among them. Congratulations!
In an essay entitled "Walking with Walser", The Quarterly Conversation tackles A Little Ramble and a book by Elfriede Jelinek that was inspired by Walser.
Poet Luljeta Lleshanaku recently contributed to The Paris Review Daily's "Windows on the World", a series on what writers from around the world see from their windows. Read it here.
Music & Literature's spring 2013 issue is devoted to László Krasznahorkai, the director Bela Tarr, and the artist Max Neumann. Needless to say, we're fans. Check it out here.
Poetry editor Jeffrey Yang recently spoke to The Atlantic's "By Heart" about George Oppen, grief, and the new collection Time of Greif: Mourning Poems.