Thursday, July 14, 2011


photo by Renate Brandt



I've been reading through Durs Grünbein's wonderful essay Why Live Without Writing. He writes with such wit, style, intelligence and depth (the same can be said of his poems) that they are a real pleasure to read.




Here's a small taster:

"Better watch out: artists are people who, unless they’re feeling particularly hypocritical and ingratiating, would laugh to scorn the claim that there’s an artist in everyone. Whether they appear in the guise of cool diplomats or cult figures or shabby drunkards, none of them is without that shred of vanity. Of course they are going to assume that someone without the lofty inner life suggested by art and poetry is to be pitied. Sooner or later he is bound to break up into aspects that may be connected to him as a legal entity, but that won’t have the least thing to do with his inner world. They shudder at the notion that one day he will realize that none of this was him, and in all of it was hardly any of it his. Then it’s usually too late, and the person will dimly sense that for the whole of a selfless life he has been working in the cause of negation."

4 comments:

Titus said...

Really enjoyed the article, but now I'm scared I'm having a Thom Gunn acid moment. The quote in the main post does not appear in the article I've read. I think. I have just started taking a new medication and am hoping it is not causing selective reading.


Re post below: I've always found Thom Gunn particularly interesting, and have a enormous fondness for 'The Butcher's Son'. I love pre-anotated books!

Marion McCready said...

did you realise the essay goes on for 4 pages? :) the quote's from page 3!

don't know that Gunn poem, I'll do a search on it!

Titus said...

Phew! No I didn't realise, I thought it stopped at the second question in some rhetorical fashion...

Roxana said...

wow, so many posts i missed, for some reason you fell out of my dashboard list of blogs again, i didn't get any notifications of new posts, as i used to!!!

for some reason his name seems to pop up in the books i am reading too, i really have to read his essays, i have stumbled upon quoted from one about the Europa myth which seems to be worth-reading as well...