mathfreakmustaine

[mathfreakmustaine]

Archives from the vintage Palestinian magazine Al-Jadeed (The New), a monthly magazine for progressive national thought and culture established in (1951). 🇵🇸🕊️🍉

Source: the Palestinian Museum / the Digital Archive

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Vladimir Mayakovsky (1917)

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I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba/Я - Куба) | Mikhail Kalatozov | 1964 | USSR

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the nuisance of our language is stunning

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Perfect poem is perfect, here is the translation (which kills the poem’s meanings but okay).

You have decided to destroy me at any cost You are going towards me. And while you are running Laughing and crying You are erasing And destroying everything On your way You have decided to destroy me at any cost But you seem inable to find The true path To me Because You know old and clear roads And no other (But actually they are short and poor No matter how much Difficult and Long They are For cruel and strong you) You only know the roads That lead From Heart And Eye But that is not all There are other roads in front of us Without public trace on them Without timeline Without time And deadlines You think that your path to poor me Is very safe and honorable The one That comes From the left Or Right You lie to yourself constalty, that I should be reached From similar directions From North Or South But that is not everything Plauge Is always smart And looks for my Eyes Under rye agitated by the wind In the root of Earth where the darkness is thick/deep And from unmeasurable heights From Above It Can It Must Press the Chest As hard as it can But that is not all You don’t know the law of of the crossroad Between two lights And Darkness But that is not all Because what you know least is that in your being The hardest fights And true wars Are in A being itself You don’t know, that actually, you are my smallest evil Among many My Big Evils You have no idea Who are you messing with You know nothing about my map of roads You don’t know that road from you to me Is not the same as th road From me To you You know nothing of my wealth Hidden for your powerful eyes (You don’t know that Destiny has given me and gifted me With much more than you imagine) You have decided to destroy me by any cost But you can’t find the right path To me (I understand you: You are a human in space and time And lives now and here And doesn’t know about limitless Space of time In which I am in Present Far from yesterday Far from tomorrow Thinking About you But that is not all)

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THE DEEP BLUE RIVER

There is no-one who knows where this place is We know only there is this place where Behind the mountains, beyond the valleys  After seven or more than eight Even worse and even harder Tougher, steeper, even farther  Thru the hawthorns, thru the brambles Thru the drought and thru the torture Past suspicion, past hesitation After nine or more than ten Then still deeper and even stronger Beyond the silence, beyond the darkness Where there is no song of rooster Where there is no sound of horn And even worse, and even farther Beyond the mind and God the Father There exists a deep blue river It is wide and it is deep.  A hundred years it is in width  And a thousand in its depth.  For its length you can’t imagine  Gloom and darkness agonizing.  There exists a deep blue river There exists a deep blue river.  We shall have to cross the river. 

Mak Dizdar

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Rastvorio sam se I potekao

Potocima

Rijekama

Morima

Sada sam tu

Sada sam tu Bez sebe

Gorak

Kako svom izvoru Da se vratim?

Mak Dizdar, Kameni spavač

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“A Text about Land”

Mak Dizdar, translation by Francis R. Jones

Once upon a time a worthy questioner asked:

Forgive me who is and what sir

Where is

Whence and

Whither sir

Prithee sir

Is this

Bosnia

The questioned swiftly replied in this wise:

Forgive me there once was a land sir called Bosnia

A fasting a frosty a

Footsore a drossy a

Land forgive me

That wakes from sleep sir

With a

Defiant

Sneer

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You have decided to destroy me no matter what Yet you fail to find The right road To me

For You know the forged and beaten roads And no other

Mak Mehmedalija Dizdar

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Selimović, Death and the dervish

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“Critics are like horse-flies which prevent the horse from plowing”, he [Chekhov] said, smiling his wise smile. “The horse works, all its muscles drawn tight like the strings on a doublebass, and a fly settles on his flanks and tickles and buzzes…. He has to twitch his skin and swish his tail. And what does the fly buzz about? It scarcely knows itself; simply because it is restless and wants to proclaim: “Look, I too am living on the earth. See, I can buzz, too, buzz about anything”. For twenty-five years I have read criticisms of my stories, and I don’t remember a single remark of any value or one word of valuable advice. Only once Skabichevsky wrote something which made an impression on me … He said I would die in a ditch, drunk.”

— Maxim Gorky, “Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Andreyev”, 1920, New York: Compass Books, 1959, pp. 79-80.

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Portrait of Maxim Gorky

Russian vintage postcard

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It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function. In other words, the unique value of the “authentic” work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty. The secular cult of beauty, developed during the Renaissance and prevailing for three centuries, clearly showed that ritualistic basis in its decline and the first deep crisis which befell it. With the advent of the first truly revolutionary means of reproduction, photography, simultaneously with the rise of socialism, art sensed the approaching crisis which has become evident a century later. At the time, art reacted with the doctrine of l’art pour l’art, that is, with a theology of art. This gave rise to what might be called a negative theology in the form of the idea of ‘pure’ art, which not only denied any social function of art but also any categorizing by subject matter.

“Fiat ars—pereat mundus,” (let art be created, though the world perishes) says Fascism, and, as Marinetti admits, expects war to supply the artistic gratification of a sense perception that has been changed by technology. This is evidently the consummation of “l’art pour l’art.” Mankind, which in Homer’s time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself. Its self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art.

Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

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“Bound in blood, consumed by roots In this kolo of sorrow Do you lead Or follow?”

— Mak Dizdar, Scar on the Stone: Contemporary Poetry from Bosnia

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Monica Bellucci in Vita coi figli (1990)

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The Beaches of Agnès (2008)