What a fun afternoon! I've had wrist problems lately, leading to a fair amount of free time (two hours of practicing a day suddenly taken out of the schedule makes a difference). Unfortunately, of course, I live alone (well, with an apartmentmate, but you know what I mean), and most of my friends are busy a lot and not incredibly social creatures. So I've been stuck sitting in front of the computer far oftener than I'd usually like. I checked out Moby Dick to help, but still, these things get old after a bit. So after Advanced Schenkerian Analysis today, as I was heading home, I thought to myself, "What am I going to do at home? Work more on long-term projects? Sit in front of a computer? How about instead I do something different?" So I turned around and headed to the Lily Rare Books library which I knew had a new exhibit up. The exhibit proved less exciting than I would have liked, but I noticed something going on in the next room. It turned out to be a poetry reading, and the lady at the front of the library said I could probably go in even though it was over half over.
So I headed in and settled into a huge chair at the back. It turned out to be a lecture/reading by poet/translator Bill Smith, who I guess is 88 year old (!) though I would have guessed mid-seventies. He read from translations of poems by foreign poets, largely French and Russian but also Hungarian and others, and talked about his life, which was fascinating - there was a time when he was "the" ambassador for American culture in the USSR, and it was interesting to hear about all his travels. The poetry was also wonderful. I will admit, his speech was very slow, and he paused fairly often to remember some unimportant detail, but you can excuse a lot of that in a person of his age. At the end, someone from IU's Institute for Advanced Study, which sponsored the event, explained that people should feel free to take a book of poetry. I stuck around afterwards and asked him afterwards confidentially if he had really meant that, and he said absolutely, and I should get it autographed. I did, but not after talking to the IAS guy for a while. Our conversation was a little awkward:
"So your name's Tim. Are you in translation?"
"No, actually."
"Ah, but you're in poetry?"
"Actually, not at all."
"Well, you're into literature."
"Sure, definitely."
He invited me to join "us" at Samira, a local Afghani restaurant, as a (non-paying) guest, an offer I somewhat incredulously accepted. (I guess there's a benefit to supporting the less-popular arts - there were only about 16 people in the audience, including me, and I think he was excited to have people there.) I got on his mailing list for future lectures by famous translators and had a wonderful dinner with fascinating conversation. Most of the people there were in foreign languages or translation, so there was much talk of world events from a much savvier perspective than I'm used to, and there was tons of discussion of literature, which made me slightly ashamed to realize how little I knew about the authors these people threw around like it was normal. I also explained my "connection" (rather, lack thereof) to the party to several somewhat baffled people. As it turned out, I was the only student there - whether because others hadn't been invited or what, I don't know. I even had a heated discussion with a somewhat weird faculty member about EMI, a computer program that writes new music in the style of music you feed it. He was arguing how incredible it was, and how people can't tell the difference between EMI-Mozart and real Mozart, and I was arguing that, however incredible the program, even a lot of musicians can't tell the difference between, say, Mozart and Pleyel, and there are lots of studies of music students showing that they don't tend to notice when the order of movements in a piece is mixed around, and trying to explain what that says about how people listen and how little people know about musical convention. (Incidentally, I think this perspective is from the wonderful, incredibly concrete and detailed perspective I've gained on music and how it works: I found it fascinating to compare this with the absolutely abstract terms they were all using about poetry, and, when it came up, music. It's so interesting to me that the type of powerful framework that I take for granted isn't how most people interact with art. You can't tell Mozart from Pleyel if you just listen for "pretty sounds" or "music that works." You can, though, if you listen for structure, gesture, expectation, tension, and even less specific things like drama - all of which we theorists have such wonderful language for understanding and discussing. No, it doesn't explain everything - but in fact it enhances everything.)
Anyway, a completely unique evening, and well-spent. It's probably hard to see in my account of it here, but it really felt like a bit of an adventure - following my nose to the library museum and then to the lecture and then saying "what the heck, sure" when invited out to dinner. And I even got a book of poetry out of it! So, without further ado, Clair de Lune, by Jules LaForgue, translated by William Jay Smith:

It comes with the force of a body blow
That the Moon is a place one cannot go.

The world is yours when you advance,
Moon, through magical August silence!

When you toss, majestic mastless wreck
In seas where black cloud-breakers break!

Ah, if my desolate soul could mount
The steps to your pure baptismal fount!

O blinded planet, fatal light
For the migratory Icarian flight!

Great sterile Eye of Suicide,
The disgusted have convened, preside;

Icy skull, make mockery
Of bald, incurable bureaucracy;

O pill of absolute lethargy,
Be dissolved in our cranial cavity!

Diana with overly Doric chlamys,
Take up thy quiver, do thy damage.

With thy one dart inoculate
Wingless Love that sleepeth late!

Planet flooded with powerful spray
May one chaste antifebrile ray

Descend and bathe my sheet tonight
So I may wash my hands of life!