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Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Social Science: the Qualitative Approach of Zygmunt Bauman

Zygmunt Bauman
(image source: Alchetron)
no copyright infringement intended

I read in NY Times an article that I found very informative. It discusses the approach Zygmunt Bauman took in his Sociological research: How To Do Social Science Without Data. Here are a few quotes:

Much of his writing was scattershot, aphoristic and repetitive. He knew nothing of disciplinary boundaries, veering into philosophy, literature, anthropology; it could be fruitful or dilettantish. Empirical evidence was equally unknown to him. Imagination and acumen counted for everything.

Well, that was his approach: extremely qualitative. And in doing so he made us think about the times, and our own lives, in entirely new ways. His contributions are essential, in explaining the real nature of Holocaust, in explaining the fall of Soviet Communism, then in finding with his Liquid Modernity the exact definition of contemporary times (consumerism seemed to pervade everything; life had become freer, more fluid and a lot more risky; in principle, contemporary workers could change jobs whenever they got bored; they could relocate abroad or reinvent themselves through shopping; they could find new sexual partners with the push of a button. But could a transient work force come together to fight for a more equitable distribution of resources? Could shopping-obsessed consumers return to the task of being responsible, engaged citizens? Could intimate partners motivated by short-term desire ever learn the value of commitment?).







(Zygmunt Bauman)

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Thursday, January 12, 2017

Zygmunt Bauman, Las Redes Sociales Son Una Trampa

Zygmunt Bauman
(fuente: mediaset)
no copyright infringement intended


Desde que planteó, en 1999, su idea de la modernidad líquida —una etapa en la cual todo lo que era sólido se ha licuado, en la cual nuestros acuerdos son temporales, pasajeros, válidos solo hasta nuevo aviso—, Zygmunt Bauman es una figura de referencia de la sociología. Su denuncia de la desigualdad creciente, su análisis del descrédito de la política o su visión nada idealista de lo que ha traído la revolución digital lo han convertido también en un faro para el movimiento global de los indignados, a pesar de que no duda en señalarles las debilidades (El País, diciembre 2015).








(Zygmunt Bauman)

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Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Zygmunt Bauman Passed Away

Zygmunt Bauman
1925-2017
¿Que futuro estamos_construyendo? (ecoportal.net)
no copyright infringement intended


Zygmunt Bauman, the father of liquid modernity concept, passed away. He clarified some crucial issues regarding our epoch. An article in El País highlights the importance of his contributions in the contemporary sociology.










(A Life in Books)

(Una Vida Entre Libros)

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Monday, May 02, 2016

Zygmunt Bauman: The Refugee Crisis Is The Humanity Crisis

Pablo Picasso: Cat Eating A Bird, 1939
(source: NY Times)
no copyright infringement intended


Zygmunt Bauman (his latest book, “Strangers at Our Door” is published with Polity Press): Those people who are forced to flee intolerable conditions are not considered to be “bearers of rights,” even those supposedly considered inalienable to humanity. Forced to depend for their survival on the people on whose doors they knock, refugees are in a way thrown outside the realm of “humanity,” as far as it is meant to confer the rights they aren’t afforded. There is currently a pronounced tendency —- among the settled populations as well as the politicians they elect to state offices — to transfer the “issue of refugees” from the area of universal human rights into that of internal security. Being tough on foreigners in the name of safety from potential terrorists is evidently generating more political currency than appealing for benevolence and compassion for people in distress.


Read in Bauman's position in today's NY Times



(Zoon Politikon)

(Zygmunt Bauman)

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Monday, December 05, 2011

Semiurgy


I will take here again a fragment from a previous blogpost, as I think a term that was used there needs explanation.

The fragment is a quote from Zygmunt Bauman's Intimations of postmodernity (1992):

In its practical implementation, communism was a system one-sidedly adapted to the task of mobilizing social and natural resources in the name of modernization: the nineteenth-century, steam and iron ideal of modern plenty. It could - at least in its own conviction - compete with capitalists, but solely with capitalists engaged in the same pursuits. What it could not do and did not brace itself to do was to match the performance of the capitalist, market-centered society once that society abandoned its steel mills and coal mines and moved into the postmodern age (once it passed over, in Jean Baudrillard's apt aphorism, from metallurgy to semiurgy; stuck at its metallurgical stage, Soviet communism, as if to cast out devils, spent its energy on fighting wide trousers, long hair, rock music and any other manifestations of semiurgical initiative).

This is the fragment, and the term is semiurgy.

Mikhail Epstein: Semiurgy is the art of creating new signs and sign systems, as opposed to semiotics as the science of signs, and rhetoric as the effective usage of signs. The word semiurge would mean an artisan of signs, the demiurge is the creator of the world.

Let's take it slowly. To begin, some sources on the web:

The term was used firstly in the works of Jean Baudrillard (French philosopher from the postmodernist epoch) and René Berger (a Swiss, also a philosopher of French expression, also a postmodernist). Which of them coined the term, it's debatable (anyway, each of them started from McLuhan).

So, semiurgy combines semiotics and demiurgy. Semiotics is the science of signs. A demiurge creates the physical objects composing the physical world. Well, the semiurge creates the signs composing our postmodern world (which is a world of signs, if you didn't know). As simple as that!

Fine, only we don't know too well what a sign is.

Here comes Baudrillard, with his object value system (For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, 1983). In passing from object to sign he considers four stages:
  1. The first is the functional value of an object; its instrumental purpose. A pen, for instance, writes; and a refrigerator cools.
  2. The second is the exchange value of an object; its economic value. One pen may be worth three pencils; and one refrigerator may be worth the salary earned by three months of work.
  3. The third is the symbolic value of an object; a value that a subject assigns to an object in relation to another subject. A pen might symbolize a student's school graduation gift or a commencement speaker's gift; or a diamond may be a symbol of publicly declared marital love.
  4. The last is the sign value of an object; its value within a system of objects. A particular pen may, while having no added functional benefit, signify prestige relative to another pen; a diamond ring may have no function at all, but may suggest particular social values, such as taste or class.
And, as Bauman uses a metaphor coined by Baudrillard (the passing from metallurgy to semiurgy), we can observe that actually they define the postindustrial society by making a parallel to the industrial society. Signs are defined by making the parallel to objects.

An industrial society operates with physical objects. A postindustrial society operates with signs, which are objects at a more abstract level.

As I understand, all societies can be characterized by their icons. In an industrial society the icon is the number of tones of steel (or of cement, or of butter): if the society produces that amount of tones of steel, everybody's happy: there will be enough steel to have any kind of goods to satisfy people. In a postindustrial society the icon is the hip-hop music: if the rating for hip-hop music is good, everybody's happy: they will buy new electronics (to listen to that music), new clothing (to go to dance), new cars (to be hip-hop tuned), new computers (to download music), the credit will work and the malls will be crowded. Steel is still there, only somewhere in the background, nobody cares any more.

Only icon is icon and keyword is keyword: in the industrial society icon and keyword were the same, steel; in the postindustrial society the icon is hip-hop, the keyword is credit.

And if mass production created and eventually killed the industrial society, will also credit be the creator and the demon?





(A Life in Books)

(Zygmunt Bauman)

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Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Fyodor Gladkov, Cement

In December 1999 I was in New York visiting my two half-sisters Jill and Pola and their mother Marjorie. We were to meet one evening for a dinner: an Indian restaurant some place in East Village. They all adored Indian cuisine, for me it was the first time. I met with Marjorie one hour earlier in front of a gas station on Houston Street and she suggested to enter a bookstore nearby. It was a huge shop, with all kind of old editions impossible to find in other place. Not only books in English, other languages were also present. In a pile of books in Russian I noticed a novel that I had read years ago in a Romanian translation. Here was the Soviet edition: Цемент by Fyodor Gladkov.




I had heard about this novel long before reading it. By that time I was already kind of familiarized with the universe of Soviet books published in the thirties / forties / fifties, when the control of the regime over the country was unquestioned. I was very curious to see something written when everything was still fluid, in the immediate aftermath of the Russian Civil War.

Cement (Цемент) was firstly published in 1925. During the years that followed, the author came back several times on the text: as the official culture of the Soviets was following the windings of the political line of the Party, Cement had to be kept in sync. And despite all these patches, the original spirit of the book is still there.

Far from being a standard for the Socialist Realist writing (as it was vaunted), Cement breathes the artistic vanguard of the 1920's. Gladkov plays here in Cement in the same team with the Constructivists, with Tatlin and Vertov, with Rusakov and Klucis. This book could be likened to Tatlin Tower, the grandiose project never accomplished, in no case to the Stalinist sky-scrappers erected in Moscow during the 1930's. Or, if it calls something in mind, it's not some ballet performance at the Bolshoy Theatre with Ulanova on the stage and Stalin in attendance, followed by champagne. No, it calls rather the last scene from Man with a Camera, imagining the destruction of Bolshoy, to make place for the new world.

Because it's about imagining the new world here in Cement: a small town somewhere in Russia in the early twenties, torn down by the war, and in the midst of all daily miseries and shortages people are trying to live the Communist values. Gladkov, like the other Constructivists, believed firmly in Communism and he created in Cement a universe resembling his convictions. Only it's the Communism as imagined by Constructivists, a place of Revolutionary spontaneity where censorship has not yet been invented, and Stalin is still together with Trotzky and all the other guys. The heroes of Gladkov question passionately the institution of family, seen as outdated and useless (it seems Communists of those times were still reading Engels and his Origin of the Family). These heroes of Gladkov are very direct when it comes to sex, they send their children to be raised outside the parental nest (to get rid of any family chain), because nothing matters but production, everything is subdued to make the cement factory work. Not many years will pass and from all this it will be the cement factory the only remaining concern, nothing else. The primacy of production as an absolute value. But here in the universe of the book all cards are still on the table, it is an intense feeling of freedom. Let's be clear on this, it's the freedom felt by those fighting to impose their own sense of freedom, their understating of freedom as understood necessity, however it's intense. And it makes the artistic value of Cement.



I mentioned above Tatlin Tower. It was an amazing project and it was definitory for the spirit animating the Soviet artists of that epoch, the years of the Russian Civil War. It remained just a project: the necessary quantity of steel would have exceeded all available resources in Russia of those years.

Gladkov's Cement came some years later: meanwhile the Soviets had learned that development of mass production was the condition of survival. In just a few years all dreams of Gladkov's heroes would be seen just as childish utopias, while the cement factory would remain the number one concern of society.

And mass production would lead also to the fall of the Soviets, decades later. Zygmunt Bauman gave an explanation for this paradox (Intimations of postmodernity, 1992):

In its practical implementation, communism was a system one-sidedly adapted to the task of mobilizing social and natural resources in the name of modernization: the nineteenth-century, steam and iron ideal of modern plenty. It could - at least in its own conviction - compete with capitalists, but solely with capitalists engaged in the same pursuits. What it could not do and did not brace itself to do was to match the performance of the capitalist, market-centered society once that society abandoned its steel mills and coal mines and moved into the postmodern age (once it passed over, in Jean Baudrillard's apt aphorism, from metallurgy to semiurgy; stuck at its metallurgical stage, Soviet communism, as if to cast out devils, spent its energy on fighting wide trousers, long hair, rock music and any other manifestations of semiurgical initiative).


(Жизнь в Kнигах)

(Zygmunt Bauman)

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Friday, June 03, 2011

Zygmunt Bauman about Globalization, Consumption Society and the like


Vasile Ernu posted on Facebook an article reproducing a conversation with Zygmunt Bauman. The article is in Romanian. I found it extremely interesting:




(Zoon Politikon)

(Zygmunt Bauman)

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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

The Five Greatest Books according to Ferguson


Niall Ferguson is a historian who challenges history mainstream. His point is that in WWI the guilty was not Germany. What would have happened if events were to develop differently in 1914? His answer: Europe would have not known either Communism or Fascism. His best-known book, The War of the World, tries to follow some scenarios: what if Great Britain had stayed out of the First War World? Would the conflict have remained local? Would the outcome have been quick and very limited?

Well, one should read the book to see his arguments.

Niall Ferguson gave in today's Newsweek his top list of books and authors:

  1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: the book that, more than any other, persuaded him to be a historian (splendid way to understand your love for a book)
  2. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon: the greatest achievement of historical writing; the irony of Gibbon's prose is the literary equivalent of Turkish Delight (as a Romanian I would say that the comparison is double-edged - two different languages lead sometimes to huge differences of meaning for the same word)
  3. Diaries by Viktor Klemperer: a unique view of the Third Reich and Holocaust from the view of a German-Jewish academic (I think that Niall Ferguson views the Holocaust very much the way Zygmunt Bauman does - not a temporary regression of civilization; rather the outcome of a modern perfect organized society)
  4. Gold and Iron by Fritz Stern: a masterpiece of scholarship; it sheds light on the relationship between Bismarck and his banker (let's note here Mr. Ferguson's focus on economy and finances as essential dimensions for history)
  5. At Swim-Two Birds by Flann O'Brien: the book that has made him laugh the most.



(A Life in Books)

(Zygmunt Bauman)

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Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Citind cartea Feliciei Antip

Felicia Antip
Cartea Feliciei Antip, Aventuri ale constiintei de sine, ia in discutie cativa scriitori evrei. Spune autoarea, unii oameni se intampla sa fie evrei, unii oameni se intampla sa fie scriitori, unii scriitori se intampla sa fie evrei. Unii dintre ei se considera scriitori evrei, altii se considera scriitori si nimic mai mult, insa lumea ii considera pe toti evrei. Unii isi asuma conditia de evreu. Altii si-o neaga. Altii o ignora.

Exista si scriitori evrei care au fost mari antisemiti. Exista scriitori evrei de toate felurile.

Holocaustul i-a marcat pe foarte multi dintre scriitorii evrei. Insa fiecare a venit cu accentele lui. Eroinele cartii lui Helen Fremont (After Long Silence) au incercat din rasputeri sa isi stearga din memorie umilintele cumplite pe care le-au indurat in anii razboiului. Si-au faurit identitati noi si si-au reconstruit cu multa grija trecutul. Unele bucati din trecut au ramas intacte, altele, care ar fi dat in vileag evreitatea, au fost inlocuite. Unul dintre eroii unei alte carti a trecut la luteranism, si dupa aceea la catolicism. Bancul cu Ionescu fost Popescu intr-o varianta dramatica. In schimb eroul unei alte carti (Coleman Silk din Human Stain a lui Philip Roth) isi construieste o biografie de evreu, pentru a-si ascunde apartenenta rasiala reala (era in realitate mulatru). Un alt personaj este pus in copilarie sa recite in fiecare seara la culcare Tatal Nostru in mai multe limbi europene - indiferent in ce tara din Europa va ajunge sa traiasca, sa para ca este nascut acolo si ca este nascut crestin.

Unor scriitori evrei care au trait Holocaustul, le va fi imposibil sa mai foloseasca limba germana. Paul Celan va scrie insa numai in germana - este limba lui - iar graiul tau este copilul tau - si prin versurile pe care le scrie incearca sa ii oblojeasca graiului german ranile cumplite pe care i le-au lasat grozaviile Holocaustului. Pentru Celan, limba germana este un copil drag care a fost pangarit odata cu victimele germanilor - si el, Celan, simte ca trebuie sa aiba grija de copilul lui cel drag.

Nu toti scriitorii evrei au scris despre Holocaust, in vreun fel sau altul. Henry Roth a trait toata viata lui in America, experientele lui traumatizante sunt de cu totul alta factura. El isi traieste drama unui secret cumplit din adolescenta de care vrea sa se elibereze prin scris - si va reusi sa fie sincer pana la capat dupa vreo saizeci de ani. Si apoi scriitorii israelieni, preocupati in primul rand de realitatile Israelului asa cum este tara aceasta azi (Naomi Ragen, Dan Grossman, ca sa dau numai doua exemple din cartea Feliciei Antip).

Fiecare scriitor e un univers. Iar Felicia Antip retraieste fiecare univers, parca si l-ar asuma - iar fiecare dintre scriitorii din cartea ei traiesc din nou in fata noastra, traiesc prin ea. Toti, de la victimele celui mai cumplit flagel al vremilor moderne, pana la evreii antisemiti - toti, fiecare este asumat de ea, asupra fiecaruia se apleaca si il urmeaza pas cu pas - iar noi, cei care ii citim cartea, urmarim vrajiti si coplesiti aventurile constiintelor de sine, dar in primul rand aventura ei spirituala.

Cartea Feliciei a aparut intr-un tiraj foarte mic. Sunt unul din putinii norocosi care au avut posibilitatea sa o citeasca, unul dintre the happy few.

Fusesem de revelion la familia baiatului meu. Ieri, pe drumul de intoarcere, am avut ragaz sa termin cartea Feliciei. Drumul cu trenul intre Boston si Washington dureaza cam opt ore. E un drum frumos. Este malul Atlanticului, cu plaja langa calea ferata, o portiune de drum. Debarcardere cu yahturi, acum stranse toate si invelite pentru iarna. Palcuri de padure intre calea ferata si ocean. Iar pe partea cealalta peisajul Noii Anglii, cu dealuri blande, cu vile placute, cu rauri care se varsa in ocean. Ma gandeam la panzele unui pictor pe care l-am descoperit la Galeria de Arta din Washington - Winslow Homer, a trait in secolul XIX si a pictat peisajele Noii Anglii, si oceanul. Un pictor foarte cuminte. Exista insa la galeria din Washington si o panza a lui, in care Homer devine cubist fara sa o stie :)

Imi aminteam de el privind pe fereastra trenului, imi veneau in minte si doua nume de scriitori cu istoriile lor de vanatoare, Sadoveanu si Turgheniev - pentru ca pe alocuri parea ca nu aveai decat sa iti iei cainele si flinta, sa iti pui niste cizme si o palarie uriasa pe cap si sa o iei prin balti.

Si iar ma intorceam la cartea Feliciei. Ultimul capitol, inchinat lui Philip Roth, este fabulos. Fireste, esti coplesit de navala cartilor pe care nu le-ai citit - si iti dai seama ca nici nu vei avea vreodata vreme sa le citesti. Dar simti cum capitolul Feliciei are respiratia universului lui Philip Roth - eroul lui, scriitorul imaginat de el care revine mereu cu o noua carte despre un erou imaginat tot ca scriitor - un scriitor imaginand un scriitor care imagineaza un scriitor, meandrele planurilor urmarind meandrele unei minti subtile si greu de descifrat poate altfel - o viata de om, de la tineretea neobrazata din Portnoy's Complaint pana la Everyman -omul asta isi imagineaza propria inmormantare? - cand o sa am vreme, si mai ales apetit, sa citesc American Pastoral? Sau Portnoy's Complaint? Am inceput odata I Married a Communist - alte carti au navalit peste si au inabusit-o (printre altele The Plot Against America - Philip Roth inabusindu-l pe Philip Roth).

Trenul ajunsese spre New York - de o parte Kosciuszcko Bridge (bancul cu cadavrul gasit pe strada Edgar Quinet si mutat pe Academiei are o varianta new-yorkeza - calul mort gasit pe Kosciuszcko Bridge) - de alta parte panorama Manhattanului - apoi trenul intra in subteran ca sa ajunga in gara new-yorkeza. Iar la lumina, spre Philadelphia.

Poate ca Felicia este cea mai ea insasi in capitolele despre cei doi Roth, Henry si Philip. Sau poate ca in aceste doua capitole Felicia uita de ea pur si simplu, cade in capcana cartilor si inoata in nisipurile miscatoare. Capitolele astea doua sunt Cartea de Nisip a Feliciei, te ratacesti si devii, odata cu ea, un Philip Roth, si in acelasi timp un Nathan Zuckerman, si Henry Roth, si in acelasi timp David din Call It Sleep, luptand sa isi elimine groaznicul secret de care va scapa (oare?) de abia peste saizeci de ani - bine, bine, frate, dar ce au toate astea legatura cu conditia de scriitor evreu? -ce mai conteaza, Felicia a ajuns aici la filonul de aur.

Baltimore - de acum este seara bine de tot. Mai am cateva pagini si sunt extenuat, nu mai pot - sunt de acum opt ore de stat in tren - si de citit.

Ne intrebam cum a fost posibil ca in secolul XX sa fie posibile asemenea monstruozitati ca Holocaustul sau Gulagul - cum a fost posibil ca intr-o societate moderna sa fie posibil primitivismul - iar Zygmunt Bauman demonstreaza ca Holocaustul nu e deloc dovada de primitivism, tocmai ca este posibil numai intr-o societate moderna - nu mai este aici vorba, zice el, de antisemitismul care facea posibile pogromurile, este vorba de o politica de inginerie sociala pe criterii rasiste, posibila datorita gradului inalt de organizare si de eficienta al societatii moderne. De abia citind capitolul consacrat de Felicia lui Zygmunt Bauman mi-am dat seama ca discutia despre imposibilitatea compararii Holocaustului si Gulagului pleaca de la o premisa gresita. De fapt si Holocaustul si Gulagul sunt programe monstruoase de inginerie sociala, in care autorii crimei sunt desincronizati de crima - si Holocaustul, si Gulagul, inseamna, in afara calailor, multa organizare - liste, transporturi, cazare, santiere - si oameni care lucreaza la aceste liste, care bifeaza sute si sute de nume dupa o lista de criterii, oameni care au grija ca trenurile sa functioneze, trenurile cu detinuti, oameni care proiecteaza baraci sau cuptoare - pana la urma intreaga societate este pusa sa lucreze pentru solutia finala! Si desincronizarea autorilor crimei de crima face posibil succesul programului! Sentimentele, instinctele, nu mai sunt necesare (ca in cazul pogromurilor din veacurile trecute).

Ma dau jos la Washington, ma asez terminat pe o banca, ma invart fara rost prin librarie (doamne fereste, sunt nebun: pe raft American Pastoral a lui Philip Roth!), infulec ceva si apoi ma sui in metro, spre casa. Si scot din nou cartea din bagaj. Si reusesc sa o termin.

Fiecare capitol este foarte diferit, pentru ca fiecare scriitor este foarte diferit. Iar Felicia a urmarit un rost de-a lungul capitolelor. Aventuri ale sinelui unor scriitori care erau evrei. Unii aproape de universul romanesc. Ba apropiindu-se, ba departandu-se - Saul Bellow, fireste, dar mai ales Paul Celan - si capitolul despre el e fascinant, pentru ca iarasi Felicia se uita pe ea insasi (si rostul pe care si l-a propus cartii) si porneste o aventura - de data asta nu mai e vorba de universul lui Philip Roth sau al lui Henry Roth - de data asta Felicia scrie ea o carte - cu un erou care pleaca din Romania inainte de a fi cunoscut, cu un alt erou care ramane aici in Romania si se lupta sa ni-l redea pe primul erou.

Cum sa va zic, Amos Oz e Amos Oz, Raymond Aron e Raymond Aron, dar Paul Celan si Petre Solomon sunt eroii Feliciei - sunt creatia ei -sigur ca Paul Celan a fost un mare, mare poet, si sigur ca a trait cu adevarat, ca si Petre Solomon, dar ce conteaza? Eroii aventurii imaginate de Felicia ma intereseaza mai mult.

Si revin, dupa ce am terminat cartea de citit, pe Todesfuge a lui Celan, cu laptele negru, cu gropile sapate in vazduh, cu toata polifonia aceea uluitoare. Pacat ca nu am acum cartea Feliciei la mine, dar uite traducerea in engleza - am gasit-o acum pe web:

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening
we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he write
she writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Marguerite
he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are all sparkling
he whistles his hounds to come close
he whistles his Jews into rows has them shovel a grave in the ground
he orders us strike up and play for the dance

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at morning and midday we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he write
she writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Margeurite
your ashen hair Shulamith we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped

He shouts jab this earth deeper you lot there you others sing up and play
he grabs for the rod in his belt he swings it his eyes are blue
jab your spades deeper you lot there you others play on for the dancing

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday and morning we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margeurite
your aschenes Haar Shulamith he plays with his vipers
He shouts play death more sweetly Death is a master from Deutschland
he shouts scrape your strings darker you'll rise then in smoke to the sky
you'll have a grave then in the clouds there you won't lie too cramped

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday Death is a master aus Deutschland
we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drinkt
his Death is ein Meister aus Deutschland his eye it is blue
he shoots you with shot made of lead shoots you level and true
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margarete
he looses his hounds on us grants us a grave in the airhe plays with his vipers and daydreams
der Tod is ein Meister aus Deutschland
dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Shulamith.

Stiati ca poemul acesta a aparut prima oara in romaneste? Dar versiunea romana (pe care Felicia Antip o prezinta in carte), si Petre Solomon, realizatorul ei, merita o discutie aparte.



(A Life in Books)

(Zygmunt Bauman)

(Petre Solomon)

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