Excerpt from the play.
B Fear rumbles over the city sky.
M Absence sleeps between the buildings at night.
C Between the cars in the lay-by,
B Between the day and the night.
A I have to be where I'm meant to be.
B Let
C Me
M Go
A The outside world is vastly overrated.
A pause
C Let the day perish in which I was born
Let the blackness of the night terrify it
Let the stars of its dawn be dark
May it not see the eyelids of the morning
Because it did not shut the door of my mother's womb
B The thing that I fear comes upon me.
C I hate you,
B I need you,
M Need more,
C Need change.
A All the totally predictable and sickening futility that is our relationship.
M I want a real life,
B A real love,
A One that is real and grows upwards in daylight.
C What's she got that I haven't got?
A Me.
B The things I want, I want with you.
M It's just. Not. Me.
A There are no secrets.
M There is only blindness.
A You've fallen in love with someone that doesn't exist.
C No.
M Yes.
B No.
A Yes.
C No.
B No.
M Yes.
C I knew this,
B I knew this,
C Why can't I learn?
A I won't settle for a life in the dark.
B Don't look at the sun, don't look at the sun.
C I love you.
M Too late.
A It's over.
Sarah Kane, Complete Plays (London:Methuen, 2001) pp.189-190.
Sunday, 30 November 2008
Sunday
Spent the day in the library today, which was nice...I really do love my biblioteca! I just love being surrounded by so much knowledge. I wish I could read every book in the place, just devour them all. Unfortunately I have to spend my time learning such interesting Spanish vocabulary as the words for 'political dissident' and 'to Europeanize' instead.
Off to James's (boyfriend) at the weekend for his 21st...I can't wait!! I've just this morning finished a huge collage for his present, which is made up of tonnes of images cut out from arty magazines and club flyers and so on. I've also got a lovely dress (which is, unfortunately, too big around the boob area, and I refuse to wear a padded bra; wearing any bra at all is a big enough deal for me!). However, before then I have a shocking amount of work to do. I really want to get started with our next text for my module on Mozambique but doubt I'll have time. Our last text was wonderful; it sent shivers down my spine. It was by Lilia Momplé, who has a bit of a reputation for being Lusophone Africa's first feminist. The text reminded me a great deal of 'The Women's Room' by Marilyn French, specifically in the way it overlapped spatial and temporal spheres, and the use of memory. One of its dominant themes was the way in which Mozambican women were exploited first by the colonial regime, and then by the post-independence Marxist regime, and how it is men that start the wars and women that pick up the pieces. So interesting.
Off to James's (boyfriend) at the weekend for his 21st...I can't wait!! I've just this morning finished a huge collage for his present, which is made up of tonnes of images cut out from arty magazines and club flyers and so on. I've also got a lovely dress (which is, unfortunately, too big around the boob area, and I refuse to wear a padded bra; wearing any bra at all is a big enough deal for me!). However, before then I have a shocking amount of work to do. I really want to get started with our next text for my module on Mozambique but doubt I'll have time. Our last text was wonderful; it sent shivers down my spine. It was by Lilia Momplé, who has a bit of a reputation for being Lusophone Africa's first feminist. The text reminded me a great deal of 'The Women's Room' by Marilyn French, specifically in the way it overlapped spatial and temporal spheres, and the use of memory. One of its dominant themes was the way in which Mozambican women were exploited first by the colonial regime, and then by the post-independence Marxist regime, and how it is men that start the wars and women that pick up the pieces. So interesting.
Ninguém meu amor by Sebastião Alba
Ninguém meu amor
ninguém como nós conhece o sol
Podem utilizá-lo nos espelhos
apagar com ele
os barcos de papel dos nossos lagos
podem obrigá-los a parar
à entrada das casas mais baixas
podem ainda fazer
com que a noite gravite
hoje do mesmo lado
Mas ninguém meu amor
ninguém como nós conhece o sol
Até que o sol degole
o horizonte em fuga que dobramos
fechando-nos os olhos.
Sebastião Alba, "Ninguém meu amor" in 50 Poetas Africanos, ed. by Manuel Ferreira (Lisbon: Plátano, 1986) pp. 400-401.
ninguém como nós conhece o sol
Podem utilizá-lo nos espelhos
apagar com ele
os barcos de papel dos nossos lagos
podem obrigá-los a parar
à entrada das casas mais baixas
podem ainda fazer
com que a noite gravite
hoje do mesmo lado
Mas ninguém meu amor
ninguém como nós conhece o sol
Até que o sol degole
o horizonte em fuga que dobramos
fechando-nos os olhos.
Sebastião Alba, "Ninguém meu amor" in 50 Poetas Africanos, ed. by Manuel Ferreira (Lisbon: Plátano, 1986) pp. 400-401.
Hello world
Hey there!
I'm Ele. I've decided to start this blog for a number of reasons.
First and most importantly, I'm intending it as a space for me to share my favourite writing from the English-, Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking worlds. I suppose the easiest way for me to express my feelings about poetry and other literature is to say that I feel the same way about it as many people my age feel about music. I want to get inside it, have it surround me, feel it shake and pulse in me. Reading a good poem makes me feel, for want of a better word, high; it is my drug. I'm lucky enough to be able to study some wonderful literature at University, but I have nobody with whom to share it, mainly because none of my poetry-enthused friends speak Spanish or Portuguese. Moreover, the literature I am most interest in - that of postcolonial Portuguese-speaking Africa (Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, São Tomé e Principé, and Guinea-Bissau) - has very little exposure on the internet, which is a terrible shame as it is, in my opinion, some of the most beautiful and insightful postcolonial literature out there. I hope to complete a master's and, eventually, a doctorate in these literatures, and so it's useful for me to get my thoughts out about them. I do also love a good deal of English-language literature and I will share that here, too.
Another reason for this blog is that I am trying to recover from anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. The one thing these diseases have in common is that they are singularly dull. So rather than boring the people around me with the details...I'm going to bore my blog with them instead. But don't worry, skip through those posts if you like - they are mainly intended as catharsis.
Finally, I think a lot about modern society and, particularly, its perceptions of women. I'm going to write my thoughts here in order to try to develop them, which will hopefully help me to understand myself more fully.
Going to get things started with one of my favourite Mozambican poems and the namesake of this blog.
I'm Ele. I've decided to start this blog for a number of reasons.
First and most importantly, I'm intending it as a space for me to share my favourite writing from the English-, Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking worlds. I suppose the easiest way for me to express my feelings about poetry and other literature is to say that I feel the same way about it as many people my age feel about music. I want to get inside it, have it surround me, feel it shake and pulse in me. Reading a good poem makes me feel, for want of a better word, high; it is my drug. I'm lucky enough to be able to study some wonderful literature at University, but I have nobody with whom to share it, mainly because none of my poetry-enthused friends speak Spanish or Portuguese. Moreover, the literature I am most interest in - that of postcolonial Portuguese-speaking Africa (Mozambique, Angola, Cape Verde, São Tomé e Principé, and Guinea-Bissau) - has very little exposure on the internet, which is a terrible shame as it is, in my opinion, some of the most beautiful and insightful postcolonial literature out there. I hope to complete a master's and, eventually, a doctorate in these literatures, and so it's useful for me to get my thoughts out about them. I do also love a good deal of English-language literature and I will share that here, too.
Another reason for this blog is that I am trying to recover from anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. The one thing these diseases have in common is that they are singularly dull. So rather than boring the people around me with the details...I'm going to bore my blog with them instead. But don't worry, skip through those posts if you like - they are mainly intended as catharsis.
Finally, I think a lot about modern society and, particularly, its perceptions of women. I'm going to write my thoughts here in order to try to develop them, which will hopefully help me to understand myself more fully.
Going to get things started with one of my favourite Mozambican poems and the namesake of this blog.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
