Robert Zend on Frigyes Karinthy / pri Karinthy (2)

See also my previous posts on Robert Zend and my new web page. / Rigardu ankaŭ miajn antaŭjn ĉi-rilatajn afiŝojn kaj mian retpaĝon pri Robert Zend:

Robert Zend (Hungarian-Canadian writer, 1929-1985): Dedications, Works, Links

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"The title of this book is a tribute to Frederic Karinthy (1888 - 1938), great Hungarian writer, humorist and philosopher, my spiritual father. The quoted passage [following] comes from the poetic essay “The One and the Nothing” of his volume Who Asked You?"

SOURCE: Zend, Robert. From Zero to One, translated by Robert Zend and John Robert Colombo (Mission, BC: The Sono Nis Press, 1973), pp. [7-8].

"La titolo de ĉi tiu libro estas omaĝo al Frederiko Karinthy (1888 - 1938), eminenta hungara verkisto, humuristo kaj filozofo, mia spirita patro. La citita ĉerpaĵo [sube] devenas de la poezia eseo “La Unu(ec)o kaj la Nulo" el lia volumo Kiu demandis al vi?

   --  Robert Zend (trad. R. Dumain), el De Nulo al Unu (1973).

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"I DEDICATE THIS BOOK to all my Ardôs (spiritual fathers and mothers):

"Johann Sebastian Bach, Béla Bartók, Ludwig van Beethoven, Lucian Blaga, William Blake, Jorge Luis Borges (photo on page 35), Pieter Bruegel, Giordano Bruno, Charlie Chaplin, Beatrice Corrigan, Maurits Cornelius Escher (whose ‘Drawing Hands’ inspired page 213), Dr. Northrop Frye, József Füsi, Márta Gergely, Jesu, Tibor Kardos, Frigyes Karinthy (photo on page 21), Leonardo da Vinci (portrait on page 98), Lucretius, Imre Madách (photo on page 40), René Magritte, Thomas Mann, Christian Morgenstern, Sándor Petöfi, Luigi Pirandello, Rainer Maria Rilke, August Rodin, Arthur Schopenhauer, Socrates, Panni Surányi, Jonathan Swift, Egerton Sykes, Immanuel Velikovsky, Mihály Vörösmarty, Richard Wagner, Sándor Weöres (photo on page 27), my father, Henrik (photo on page 85) and my mother Stephanie, etc.;"

SOURCE: Zend, Robert. Oāb, Book 1 & 2. Toronto: Exile Editions Ltd, 1983, 1985. [Book Two begins on downloadable PDF file p. 99.] Karinthy image: Book One, p. 21 (text also on that page) [PDF file: p. 22]. Dedication: Book Two, p. 212 [PDF file: p. 210].

"Mi dediĉas ĉi tiun libron al ĉiuj miaj Ardôs (spiritaj gepatroj) ... [listo sekvas]"

   --  Robert Zend (trad. R. Dumain), el Oāb (1983, 1985).

Supre estas desegnaĵo de Frigyes Karinthy; sur la sama paĝo en la libro (1-a volumo) troveblas teksto. La dediĉo devenas de la 2-a volumo. Atentu inter la spiritaj gepatroj Karinthy kaj Imre Madách, ankaŭ aliajn famajn hungarajn verkistojn, kaj aliajn verkistojn, komponistojn, artistojn, ktp. Mi aparte rimarkas William Blake, Jorge Luis Borges, Giordano Bruno, Charlie Chaplin, M. C. Escher, René Magritte, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jonathan Swift.

Kiel usonanoj diras: "jen mondo malgranda." Zend ekziliĝis el Hungario al Kanado en 1956, iĝis parto de la kanada literatura, kultura, kaj intelekta sfero kaj komencis verki ankaŭ anglalingve. Li vizitis kaj amikiĝis al Jorge Luis Borges. Li estis amiko de Marcel Marceau. Lin inspiris la hungara tradicio, aparte Madách kaj Karinthy (kiuj interesas min), ankaŭ artistoj kiuj ege min interesas--Blake, Escher, Magritte.

Ju pli mi esploras, des pli mi konvinkiĝas, ke la ŝlosila verkisto, kiun mi devas studi, estas Karinthy.

Magritte, patafiziko, ars combinatoria

"Magritte diris, ke oni ne povus provizi validan eksplikon de afero ĝis oni eksplikus tiun eksplikon." — Bernard Noël

Eble vi scivolas, kial mi afiŝas pri Magritte, ankaŭ krokodile, sen konekso kun Esperanto. Nu, la daŭra fadeno estas ars combinatoria (arto de kombinaĵoj), kiu rilatas al interlingvistiko, specife rilate al la epoko de aprioraj filozofiaj lingvoj. Analizado de la motivoj, logiko, kreivo, kaj limoj de la koncepto de kombinado estas stimula, esplorenda kampo.

Kiel vi vidos en antaŭaj afiŝoj, Magritte havas propran perspektivon pri kombinaĵoj, kiu komparendas kun aliaj. Do jen, el liaj Écrits Complets (jen la enhavtabelo kaj indeksoj de ĉiuj temoj kaj personoj pri kiuj Magritte komentis) estas la kolektitaj komentoj de Magritte pri la patafiziko de Alfred Jarry (kiu alimaniere rilatas al ars combinatoria):

 Magritte, la Pataphysique et son Collège

Magritte: invention, imitation, meaning, ars combinatoria

René Magritte to Harry Torczyner

on Imitation, Invention, & Meaning

[. . .] I can state categorically that the cultural offensive I have in mind should be viewed “positively,” that is, not consisting in such “comparisons” as, for example, the one that I used in conversation with you, casually, when I merely noted that the imitated is being taken for the imitator. That refers to a kind of anecdote, amusing to us, but likely to be taken too seriously by the public. Indeed, the public has a habit of zeroing in on the anecdotal side of History. It is best not to cater to such habits if one means to “work” in a less mechanical manner. If one goes on the offensive, then one must truly attack such habits by stressing the things that are usually ignored. When I think of painting, it is, de facto, opening an offensive against such habits, even though I don’t actually have that in mind. De jure, it’s solely a question of ideas that, by their nature, cannot really be discussed.

As illustration, an isolated example, I take one of my pictures: “La Découverte du feu” [The Discovery of Fire], which depicts a burning iron key (another picture shows a burning trumpet). Nobody had ever thought of that before, or, at least, nobody had ever mentioned it in writing, speaking or painting. The “anecdotal” history might reveal that a few years after the birth of this picture Dalí painted a burning giraffe, and that owing to an intensive publicity campaign he is the one who is believed to have invented the notion of an unusual burning object. Thus, the “anecdote”' misses the point, it is ignorant of the invention in its purity, its measure, it only takes into account a superfluous exaggeration that waters down the precise vigor of the original invention. To avoid falling into this error, any “positive” offensive—in the case of “La Découverte du feu”—must only aim to enlighten, it must not concern itself with what happens elsewhere, with the clumsy uses to which the notion of a burning object may be put. This clumsiness, or, rather, this unintelligence, reduces great things to small things, the unknown to the known, following a practice that is the opposite of any true act of Mind. In confirmation of this, the public’s interest in current plans to inspect the Moon is right in line with this habit of reducing and mixing things up: people want to reduce the mysterious to something knowable and the familiar feeling we have with regard to things of which we are ignorant (for example: the mystery of the exact number of fleas on the youngest lion in the bush or the complete “lunography”) then gets confused with the non-familiar feeling of mystery (for example, the mystery inherent in the comfortable room in which one sits to smoke one’s pipe).

“Anecdote” interests the good folk who learn from it that Racine was unpopular in his day and that another so-called poet who is forgotten today was greatly admired. However, those good persons do riot know Racine any better (I am not Racine, notwithstanding the tacit obligation to be).

As for the munitions our armies require, I must admit that the only kind I can provide are . . . the pictures I can paint. These are demanding, and I have just enough strength to satisfy them, + or  .

SOURCE: Magritte, René. Letter to Harry Torczyner, 24 January 1959 (excerpt), in Magritte/ Torczyner: Letters Between Friends, translated from the French by Richard Miller, introduction by Sam Hunter (New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1994), pp. 35-36.

Magritte, ars combinatoria, Borges

Les affinités électives (1933)

Written 5 September 2011:

One should not be hasty in assuming that all surrealists held to the party line of the movement. Magritte was more circumspect about the arbitrary juxtapositions that Breton celebrated in Lautréamont. Here's an excerpt from a piece [On “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” by Jorge Luis Borges] I wrote recently on Borges & his tacit attitude towards surrealism:

I mentioned the propensity of surrealism to capitalize on exotic juxtapositions. Shock effects can easily be produced by juxtaposing two incongruous objects. But how original is this? René Magritte had caveats about such casual juxtapositions, and he considered his artworks exercises in problem-solving, exemplified in his Les affinités électives (1933). In addition to how he solved the particular problem of this work, Magritte in a lecture of February 1937 contrasts arbitrary and essential juxtapositions:

There is a secret affinity between certain images; it is equally valid for the objects which those images represent . . . We are familiar with birds in cages; interest is awakened more readily if the bird is replaced by a fish or a shoe; but though these images are strange they are unhappily accidental, arbitrary. It is possible to obtain a new image which will stand up to examination through having something final, something right about it: it’s the image showing an egg in the cage.

Borges, Menard, Quixote, Ars Combinatoria

Iam mi devos verki ĉi-teme en Esperanto. Jen plu en la angla. Sed "Pierre Menard, aŭtoro de Donkiĥoto", "La Alefo", kaj "La Analiza Lingvo de John Wilkins"  troveblas en la antologio La Sekreta Miraklo. De Borges haveblas miabloge Hajkoj kaj Tankaoj, La Sudo, kaj La Biblioteko de Babelo. En Vikipedio vidu Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz kaj René Magritte.

Here is my latest piece on Jorge Luis Borges:

On “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” by Jorge Luis Borges, by Ralph Dumain

Here again we find several references and allusions to the ars combinatoria and to its limitations. See also my essay On “The Aleph” by Jorge Luis Borges: Observations and Questions. And of course there is my web guide:

Jorge Luis Borges: Selected Study Materials on the Web

The question of mechanical combinatorialism leads to more general considerations on the fruitfulness of juxtapositions, and to the evaluations of Borges and others on the theory and practice of surrealism. Note my links to René Magritte at the bottom of my web page. (See also René Magritte in Wikipedia, kaj en Vikipedio en Esperanto). See also my other links on juxtaposition, in art, fiction, and poetry.

Note this comment by Michael Theune in "Writing Degree ∞ (on Recent Haiku)", Pleiades Book Review, January 2008:

"Haiku has suffered more from Surrealism than from any other theory or aesthetic."

Theune has much more of interest to say.  He also refers to this web site:

Computerized Haiku

Magritte comes out as a positive in Theune's deliberations, which concern poetry in general, of which haiku provides just one telling form. This should enhance our appreciation of Borges' imaginative oeuvre.