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As time goes by
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Schmaltzig
You have heard of Kafka’s work being known only because of its popularization by his middlebrow friend, Max Brod. Karl Kraus, the Viennese satirist, said, “Geist auf Brod ist Schmaltz,” which is to say, Brod couldn’t even appreciate what it is he was purveying. The high things of the spirit, mediated by Max Brod, are […]
Schmaltzig
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King Claudius by Cavafy
This poem by Cavafy (in my translation) has an unconventional (to say the least) take on the character of Hamlet’s uncle Claudius and the plot of Shakespeare’s play: My minds turns to distant places.I walk along the streets of Elsinore,and round its squares, and I rememberits saddest story, that unfortunate kingkilled by his nephewfor imaginary […]
King Claudius by Cavafy
This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus on 20 July 1974. The heavy fighting left many dead and the island split between Greek Cypriots in the south and the Turkish occupied north, with peace being maintained by a UN Buffer Zone between them. In ‘Spoon sweet’ by the Cyrpiot poet, […]
The 1974 Turkish invasion reflected in Cypriot poetry
Tamara Andreeva in 1930 Nearly a decade ago, writing for the Los Angeles Review of Books, of which I was not yet the editor, I reported on some of the earliest discoveries I made on my long search for the voices of LA’s Russophone past. Among them was the journal The Land of Columbus (Zemlya […]
“To Cry a While in the Wind”: Tamara Andreeva Comes to Los Angeles
Whilst waiting for the weather to turn fair,
I brush the chalk dust from out my hair,
straighten up this my bedraggled gown,
take the next, if available bus for coffee,
in our overcrowded Cornish town.
Beware the tilted pavements, the granite chicanes,
canine trailing trip wires and sleeping bags
that litter the arcades. Walk carefully along
the pavement edge and avoid the scaffolded barricades.
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