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Sunday, September 27, 2015

TALKING TO GHOSTS

TALKING TO GHOSTS


Theodor Storm: „O bleibe treu den Toten“

O bleibe treu den Toten,
Die lebend du betrübt;
O bleibe treu den Toten,
Die lebend dich geliebt!
Sie starben; doch sie blieben
Auf Erden wesenlos,
Bis allen ihren Lieben
Der Tod die Augen schloß.
Indessen du dich herzlich
In Lebenslust versenkst,
Wie sehnen sie sich schmerzlich,
Daß ihrer du gedenkst!
Sie nahen dir in Liebe,
Allein du fühlst es nicht;
Sie schaun dich an so trübe,
Du aber siehst es nicht.
Die Brücke ist zerfallen;
Nun mühen sie sich bang
Ein Liebeswort zu lallen,
Das nie hinüberdrang.
In ihrem Schattenleben
Quält eins sie gar zu sehr:
Ihr Herz will dir vergeben,
Ihr Mund vermag’s nicht mehr.

O bleibe treu den Toten,
Die lebend du betrübt;
O bleibe treu den Toten,
Die lebend dich geliebt!

A while back I found myself in conversation with certain departed friends + I realized that I had reached the stage of what I call


TALKING TO GHOSTS
and that there are far more ghosts to talk to than living friends or former authors and co-workers of all kind.

These conversations are
continuations...
of prior ones,
emendations
arguments
corrections
recriminations
apologies,
instances take the form
of wanting to make amends
but
in the underlined instances -
if you think of these conversations
in novelistic terms -
they
could be days if not weeks long,
the German word
ausufern
=flooding, breaching of dikes=
comes to mind and there is a novel of a unique kind buried in that idea and buried it will remain since I have volumes to complete but dwell on the notion of some of these conversations then intersecting since these friends in some cases knew each other, or become more closely acquainted in this domain of the imaginary.

The ones I find myself most frequently in conversation with are

Kurt Anschel, the closest Oakwood School Friend

Frank Conroy
a close friend until he cut out to Nantucket
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/07/books/frank-conroy-dies-at-69-led-noted-writers-workshop.html

Jerry Leiber
a near father in law!
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/23/arts/music/jerry-leiber-rock-n-roll-lyricist-dies-at-78.html

Paula Dunaway
I had hoped that the recently - 2017 -deceased Paula 
- love of my life senior year in college and for nearly another year at Stanford -
  toward the ends of our life would have a chance to tell each other what our lives had been like since last we saw each other in the mid 1970s
http://www.mauinews.com/news/local-news/2017/03/wife-of-poet-w-s-merwin-dies-at-their-peahi-home/


the 2016 deceased name-cousin Lee Roloff
a stellar analyst,
of Jungian persuasion
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10462937.2017.1349366?journalCode=rtpq20

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10462937.2017.1346159?journalCode=rtpq20

https://shrinkrapttheater.com/page5.html

http://www.jungchicago.org/images/images/Remembering-Lee-Roloff.pdf

Catherine Wolfman
 deceased  in 2006
with whom I shared extra-ordinary experiences during the 70s in New York

One of my closest and dearest friends,
Paul Sylbert passed several years ago and no one let me know... we had been e-mailing, I knew he was on oxygen and then I was afraid to call to get the bad news
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/movies/paul-sylbert-dead-oscar-winner-heaven-can-wait.html

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt just passed -
we shared Berlin experiences as well
as a New York friendship and a lively
e-mail correspondence

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/obituaries/christopher-lehmann-haupt-dead.html


https://www.welt.de/regionales/rheinland-pfalz-saarland/article186394902/Autor-Edgar-Hilsenrath-mit-92-Jahren-gestorben.html?wtrid=onsite.onsitesearch

The first Anerican writing teacher to make an impression and leave a lasting influence with the marvelous course he taught the Seniors at Oakwood School,  Yoshiro {Yosh} Sanbonmatsu

AND I now add author Larry Birns
"The End of Chilean Democracy"
Continuum Books, 1974 to this growing list

http://www.coha.org/message-from-the-board-and-friends-of-coha-on-the-passing-of-larry-birns/

scroll all the way down this pdf
https://www.oakwoodfriends.org/clientuploads/oak_leaves/OakLeaves-Winter-2017-2018.pdf

I first saw Carl Weber as a soldier in Johannes R. Becher's infamous STALINSCHLACHT at the Berliner Ensemble in 1957, later we became friends and collaborators over his directing my Handke translations and my vetting his Mueller work. If he had faults, and they were serious, it was that he was "pussy whipped", his wife fell ill everytime she did not want him to go somewhere without her, and that he felt obligated to add to his resume the most tenous connection, but he was a terriffic collaborator in the here and now https://news.stanford.edu/2017/01/11/carl-weber-professor-emeritus-drama-protege-director-bertolt-brecht-dies-91/


The other day I found myself in conversation in a dream with John Felstiner, we were discussoing Handke's work which is always on my mind, I was citing the major posts Handke had to pass to be admitted to the cast of classics and John who seemed a bit shorter as he stood there assented to each and every one.
I met John Felstiner in Seattle during one of his readings and we became instant friends, a very rare presence, one of the very few that I encountered during my West Coast Years. Chief connection of course was German-Jewish Poetry, Celan, Nelly Sachs... 

https://news.stanford.edu/2017/03/09/poetry-scholar-translator-john-felstiner-dies/




first a quote from Handke's 
DIE UNSCHULDIGEN 
that is entirely apropos
 "Die Toten. Mir geht es mehr und mehr so, daB ich sie anrede,
im s tillen, die Toten: Und es sind das, seltsam, nicht die
schon lange Toten, sondern die Juengstverstorbenen. Und ich
erzahle ihnen dann, was der Fall ist, zahle ihnen den Tag auf,
klipp und klar. Na ja, weder klar noch klipp, und auch nicht,
was der Fall ist. Nein, kein Erzahlen - eine bloBe Wendung
an sie, die Toten. Aber schon in der Wendung an sie, mit ihr"
==================

Excluded are family members.

Only a single truly hated is among the listed, the monstrous Roger Straus,
too bad there's no Hell, sure'd like to run into him there
 while on my way to a stretch in limbo!

OAKWOOD SCHOOL:
KURT ANSCHEL
JOHN ERNST
SALLY WEDGEWOOD
YOSHIRA S0NMBANMATSO
LIBBY LEVINSON-MOROFF
SAM HO
The Newlins
Professor Mason

HAVERFORD COLLEGE +
BRYN MAWR

FRANK CONROY
JOHN MUSSER
DANNY THOMAS
HARRY PFUND
JOHN ASHMEAD
KEN GEIST

ALICE TURNER
PAMELA WYLIE
PAUL DUNAWAY
Caroline Leslie Whitney

NEW YORK:
JERRY LEIBER
ELAINE KAUFMAN
CANDIDA DONADIO
ROBBIE LANTZ
WERNER LINZ
JEFF BROWN
JACK RICHARDSON
BUZZ FARBER
TOM BUCKLEY (NYT)
NICO, THE RESTAURATEUR
SUSAN SONTAG
RICHARD GILMAN
MICHAEL LEBECK
ROBERT PHELPS
BORIS PEARLMAN/ POLICEBAND
MICHAEL LOCASCIO
RUTH LANDSHOF-YORK
HENRY ROBBINS
DONALD BARTHELME
Richard Poirier
DONALD WARD
RICHARD DILOFF​
    JEFFREY STEINBERG
   LEO FELDSBERG​
   Dr. Eugene Schwartz
PETER PEARL, bar keep
DR. MARC VECHSLER
FRED PRAEGER
GEORGE ALDOR
ARTHUR ROSENTHAL, the publisher
Arnold Dolin, editor
Martin Kessler, editor 
Kurt Eisler, the analyst
Roger Straus, Sr. 
-not exactly a friend but a dishonorable thief and I keep saying quite a few things to him!
MARIANNE MADDEN
Mary Hanson (Siff)
Miriam Hansen

STANFORD UNIVERSITY
John Felstiner
Carl Weber
GUS BLAISDELL



L.A. + SEATTLE

FRITZ REDLICH
TOM BARRY
Arnold Heidsick
Richard Sylbert
robert sandel
[name cousin] Lee Roloff, a wonderful Jungian analyst
Ted Dorpat, author of WOUNDED MONSTER, a fine analysis of hitler's trauma



GERMANY + WRITERS + AUTHORS
NELLY SACHS
UWE JOHNSON
GUENTER GRASS
PETER WEISS
CHRISTIAN ENZENSBERGER
FRANZ INNERHOFER
LARS GUSTAFSON
LEDIG ROWOHLT
FRITZ RADDATZ
Theodor Adorno
HUBERT FICHTE
LEDIG ROWOHLT
SIEGFRIED UNSELD
Klaus Piper
SAM SHEPARD
TANKRED DORST
JAKOB ARLOW
WILFRED BURCHETT



BREAST CANCER VICTIMS
The Most Painful, for Beauty to die in that Fashion,
incidentally or rather not: none were lovers, might have beens!
Lacey Fosburgh
LOIS WALLACE
Hannah Wilke
KATHLEEN TYNAN

-------------
September 20 2018


https://www.zeit.de/kultur/kunst/2018-09/fotografin-verlegerin-inge-feltrinelli-gestorben ​AND ANOTHER FRIEND BITES THE DUST. INGE MADE A PASS AT ME AT THE GRUPPE 47 MEETING IN PRINCETON IN 1966 BUT THERE WERE TOO MANY PEOPLE AROUND WHO KNEW BOTH OF US TO OBLIGE, CHICKENED OUT.​ KNEW HER FROM MY AUNT ANNALIE IN HAMBURG WHERE SHE WAS LEDIG ROWOHLT'S SOMETHING OR OTHER. WE STAYED IN TOUCH AND SHE WAS INTERESTED IN MY WORK. X M.R




 PETER MAYER A FEW WEEKS AGO, DID NOT KNOW ROTH, SYLBERT A TRULY CLOSE FRIEND, NO ONE ALERTED ME WHEN HE DIED TO YEARS AGO. I WAS WORRIED, HE WAS ON OXYGEN AND THERE HAD BEEN NO E-MAIL FOR A FEW YEARS AND I WAS TOO COWARDLY TO CALL.WONDER HOW BRUCE JAY FRIEDMAN IS DOING  A TRULY GOOD FRIEND = TWO LOVERS DIED IN THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS. MARY HANSEN AND ALICE TURNER WHO WAS THE PLAYBOY FICTION EDITOR AND FUCKED LIKE THE PROVERBIAL 'SMALL WHALE.' JOHN FELSTINER DIED ABOUT HALF A YEAR AGO, WHAT A TRULY LOVELY SPIRIT, OLD TINE COLLABORATOR CARL WEBER WHOM I FIRST SAW PLAYING A SOLDIER IN J. R BECHER'S STALIN-SCHLACHT AT THE ENSEMBLE IN 1957 IN BERLIN HIS ASHES WERE SCATTERED IN THE PACIFIC EARLY THIS YEAR, BIGGEST LOVE OF MY COLLEGE DAYS, PAULA DUNAWAY LAST MARRIED TO  W.S. MERWIN EXPIRED WITHOUT OUR HAVING A CHANCE TO EXAMINE EACH OTHER'S TRIPS. PAULA SURE WAS THE GIRL TO MARRY OF ALL THE ONES BACK THEN IN JUST ABOUT EVERY RESPECT AND IT IS ONE LOSS I NEVER MANAGED TO GET OVER. Sister Grace/Gisela and her husband Claude, too, passed. It's getting cold and lonely indeed. 

THE NEW YORK TIMES" DIDNT HAVE THE GUTS TO PUBLISH THE BELOW COMMENT

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/books/review/why-read-books-considered-obscene.html?ref=review

The  two pieces make obscenity seem like  child’s play, I scratch me head what all those court battles, all the fuss, say about Lady Slutterly & Ulysses were about! On the other hand, recalling the kind of sexuality of the kids I grew up amongst,  and Freud’s  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Essays_on_the_Theory_of_Sexuality
 Lolita seemed anything but innocent at age 12, Humbert, the cherisher seemed peculiar. 

Being co- publisher of Urizen Book affored opportunity to publish, fifty years after its appearance in French,  George Batilles’s STORY OF THE EYE  to which a lover, a few years prior had introduced me, as well as to “Playing Bataille"


"Simone derives pleasure from inserting hard and soft-boiled eggs for her vaginal and anal stimulation; she also experiences considerable enjoyment from the viscosity of various liquids”  being the least of Bataille’s transgressions  compared to hiss concerted effort to  Épater,  if that is all it was, his Catholicsm, if you follow the games into darker regions 


  I can’t decide whether anything erotic is ever obscene, as war most  certainly is and its mongers,  there was a lot of innocent “playing Bataille” downtown during the 70s before matters there, too, got darker.

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MICHAEL ROLOFF http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name exMember Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society this LYNX will LEAP you to all my HANDKE project sites and BLOGS: http://www.roloff.freehosting.net/index.html "MAY THE FOGGY DEW BEDIAMONDIZE YOUR HOOSPRINGS!" {J. Joyce} "Sryde Lyde Myde Vorworde Vorhorde Vorborde" [von Alvensleben] contact via my website http://www.roloff.freehosting.net/index.html

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