Letters to a young poet!

Mario Vargas Llosa

Some words from his fantastic book

Letters to a young novelist

that has meant world to me!

....a man or a woman develops precociously in childhood or early in his or her teenage years a penchant for dreaming up people, situations, anecdotes, worlds different from the world in which he or she lives, and that inclination is the first sign of what may later be termed literary vocation.

This is where you are now: at the difficult and thrilling moment when you must decide whether you will go beyond amusing yourself with the creation of fictional realities, whether you will set them down in writing. It that´s what you choose, you will certainly have taken a very important step, though your future as a writer will still be far from assured. But the decision to commit yourself, to orient your life toward the achievement of your purposes, is already a way - the only possible way - of beginning to be a writer.

... the source of the literary vocation.... the answer, I think, is rebellion.

It is an all-encompassing, all-excluding occupation, an urgent priority, a freely chosen servitude that turns its victims (its lucky victims) into slaves.

& the best

Don´t write to live but live to write!

YES!

Words

Words

Creep up on me

linger on my earlobes

touches my tongue

tickle my fingers

but they don´t shoot out

like shining stars

on paper

They stay 

put on top of my head

crying for me

to find a use 

to bleed

to make a mark

Wind, Sand and Stars

The Poet of the Skies!

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a name I will never be able to pronounce is most known for "The Little Prince". But in my mind I can only think of him as the adventurous pilot who flew mail over the Sahara Desert and who mysteriously disappeared over the Mediterranean.

"Wind, Sand and the Star" was given to me by my boyfriend right when we first met and I was going away, for two long love hungry weeks. This book was therefore loved to pieces as a substitute and it did not disappoint. It will forever be one of my favorites.

Let me bring out some of the wonderful words by this man of stunning courage, and share it with you. 

You are not the dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers. You are a petty bourgeois of Toulouse. Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.

...and when night has fallen I, delivered, shall read my course in the stars.

True riches cannot be bought. One cannot buy the friendship of a Mermoz, of a companion to whom is bound forever by ordeals suffered in common. There is no buying the night flight with its hundred thousand stars, its serenity, its few hours of sovereignty. It is not money that can procure for us that new vision of the world won through hardship - those trees, flowers, women, those treasures made fresh by the dew and color of life which the dawn restores to us, this concert of little things that sustain us and constitute our compensation.

Wind, sand, and stars. The austerity of Trappists. But on this badly lighted cloth, a handful of men who possessed nothing in the world but their memories were sharing invisible riches.

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something moulded. These prison walls that this age of trade has built up round us, we can break down. We can still run free, call to our comrades, and marvel to hear once more, in response to our call, the pathetic chant of the human voice.

...all you think about is sleep. I would long for it; but then I would say to myself, 'If my wife still believes I am alive, she must believe that I am on my feet. The boys all think I am on my feet. They have faith in me. And I am a skunk if I don't go on.' 

Oh, I could just go on and on and this is just the beginning of the book, you just need to pick it up and perhaps just cry by the beauty of it all. Am I getting a bit too passionate here?

Saul Bellow

..

Herzog 

By

Saul Bellow

This might not be the book to pick up if you are feeling a bit down right now. It took me a really long time to finish these 354 pages. Although there are gold leaves dripping all over the place I felt quite drained. But what about picking up on some of the gold leaves and remember the book by these;

Professor Herzog had the unconscious frankness of a man deeply preoccupied.

He went on taking stock, lying face down on the sofa. Was he a clever man or and idiot? Well he could not at this time claim to be clever.

But his sexual powers had been damaged by Madeleine. And without the ability to attract women, how was he to recover?

A scandal was after all a sort of service to the community.

Looking for happiness - ought to be prepared for bad results.

I´m not even greatly impressed with my own tortured heart. It begins to seem another waste of time.

People greatly respected in their generation often turn out to be dangerous lunatics.

...How paradoxical it is that a man who uses heroin may get a 20-year sentence for what he does to himself.

Invariably the most dangerous people seek the power.

I understand that Madeleine´s ambition was to take my place in the learned world. To overcome me... as queen of the intellectuals, the castiron bluestocking. And your friend Herzog writing under this sharp elegant heel.

I look at myself and see chest, thighs, feet - a head. This strange organization I know it will die. And inside - something, something, happiness...."Thou movest me."

"Herzog" was published in 1964, and one of the timely subjects it describes is how men "were" really frightened by the power Women suddenly had in the "learned world". Herzog (former Professor) had been deceived and trampled on and goes completely under. He writes awkward opinionated letters to all whom he knows, living or dead.

I actually thought he was going to fade away by the end. His humiliation is crumbling him and not one of his moves seem to make his situation better. Frustrating, to follow this character through his downfall, but you still can´t help but to take short breaks to indulge the sentences and feel slightly richer by it all as well.

Saul Bellow received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976;

"For the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture

 that are combined in his work"

Champagne breeze: Herta Muller

Champagne breeze: Herta Muller