[If interested in participating in this series, "What Do You Re-Read?" please go HERE for more information. We welcome your participation.]
Marton Koppany Re-Reads!
1) What books and/or authors do you
re-read?
2) Optional: Please provide
comments on your answer.
Pilinszky, Kafka and Pessoa
I like to reread my old
companions from time to time. They, together, are the only tradition I can
relate to, and I accept its eventuality too. What follows is my shortlist. I
didn’t add anything that I haven’t been rereading and opening again and again
for a relatively long time. And because I started learning English at thirty,
and reading linguistically challenging modern and contemporary poetry in
English only 15 years ago or so, my list in that field is very limited and
doesn’t reflect my present interests. I need more time to become a real
re-reader of, say, George Oppen, who I like more and more and whose poetry I
am happy to read in the original now…
Franz Kafka: The
Trial
In my elementary school
there was a boy who liked to boast of having read Egri Csillagok (a very
popular juvenile book in the last century) more than ten times. I can’t compete
with him but I’ve read The Trial (and "lost" it soon – because it is
so immune from abstractions) at least five or six times and I would open it
frequently between two close readings too. I need it all the time. And it
sounds more and more hymnic. I am always amazed how much it is not
"kafkaesque" at all.
Zen Flesh, Zen
Bones; compiled by Paul Reps
I came across the
distorted cartoons of three Zen koans almost 40 years ago in a state sponsored
Marxist magazine of social sciences. It was really a chanche event. A few years
later I stared reading koans and related stuff (first in French) and I still
do. The Gateless Gate in Reps’s book was among the first collections that I got
familiar with and I still open it frequently.
The Diamond Sutra, translated and explained by Edward Conze, in
Buddhist Wisdom Books
Shobogenzo, Zen essays by Dogen, translated by Thomas Cleary
Gershom Scholem: The
Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality
Books by three
incomparable Hungarian poets that are always with me:
Dezso Tandori: Toredek
Hamletnek
Janos Pilinszky: Nagyvarosi
ikonok
Erno Szep: Jarok-kelek,
megallok
(Erno Szep was
rediscovered by Tandori, so I’m especially indebted to DT.)
Sophocles: Philoctetes
Sophocles: Antigone
Sophocles: Oedipus The
King
Corneille: Le Cid
Moliere: Le
Misanthrope
Heinrich von Kleist: The
Prince of Homburg
Bertold Brecht: Fear
and Misery of The Third Reich
Fernando Pessoa: Selected
Poems
(He was published first
in 1969 in the excellent translation of Gyorgy Somlyo. How lucky I was to get
it at 16. He became the "hero” of my youth – and nothing has changed since
then.)
Cavafy Selected
Rilke Selected
(I read literature only
in French and in English besides Hungarian, therefore I’m extremely grateful
for the rich and high level translation literature of my country. All my
favorite Rilke poems exist in several translations.)
Dostoevsky: Crime
and Punishment
(I’ve read it at least
four times: it is a close second to The
Trial. :-)
Tolstoy: Anna Karenina
Camus: Exile and The
Kingdom
Ernest Becker: The
Denial of Death
Rober Lax: New Poems
1962/1985
Fluxus etc., The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection
(especially: George
Brecht and his events!)
Bern Porter: Found
Poems
3) Please provide a list of your books
(including chaps) and links, if any. Books can be written or edited.
(This detail is to provide some info about the responder.)
It is funny to add my own
titles of "visual poetry" and "language art" to my notes,
but that is what I was meant to do. This is the first (and probably the last)
case in my life that I'll be able to dream myself, publicly, in Corneille’s
company – so why not enjoy myself. :-)
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Translation (from Koppany's book, Modulations)
Marton Koppany’s Books
in print:
Immortality and
Freedom, Little Critic Pamphlets,
Coracle Press, London, 1991.
The Other Side, self-published in 20 copies, Budapest, 1995.
(Distributed by Printed
Matter, New York.)
To Be Or
To Be, Runaway Spoon Press,
Port Charlotte, Florida, 1996.
It Is The Same, Supplemental Series, LVNG, Chicago, 1997.
The Other Side, Kalligram Publishing House, Bratislava, 1999.
Investigations &
Other Sequences, Ahadada Press,
Toronto-Tokyo, 2003
Study, eIghT-pAGE pREss, Puhos, Finland, 2006.
Endgames, Otoliths, Rockhampton, Australia, 2008:
this is visual poetry, chapbookpublisher.com, Kingston, Pennsylvania,
2010:
Modulations, Otoliths, 2010:
The Reader, Runaway Spoon Press, Port Charlotte, Florida, 2012.
Addenda, Otoliths, 2012:
Marton Koppany's E-books:
Waves, Eratio, New York, 2008:
A Motion, cPress, Finland, 2011:
A Book ofQuestion
(mark)s, 2013, self-published,
online on SCRIBD
Hungarian LangArt, Eratio, New York, due in January, 2014
Marton Koppany's Collaborative books:
From The Annual
Records of The Cloud Appreciation Society, collaborated with Nico Vassilakis, Otoliths, Rockhampton, Australia,
2008:
Short Movies, collaborated with Jukka-Pekka Kervinen,
cPress, Puhos, Finland, 2008.
The animated version of
the book is online:
Book of Numbers, collaborated with Jim Leftwich, Luna Bisonte Prods,
Columbus, OH, 2011.
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