Frank Bidart en Terrence McNally oor Maria Callas
I
Frank Bidart (1939), ‘n bekende Amerikaanse digter, studeer aan die Universiteit van Kalifornië—Riverside en later aan Harvard. Aanvanklik stel hy in drama belang en die leser kan die impak hiervan sien op sy gedigte wat sterk dramaties in aanbod is. Sy gedigte is dikwels moeilik om te volg weens die vreemde punktuasie en ‘n vermenging van joernaalinskrywings, interne gesprekke, anekdotes en briewe.
“The War of Vaslav Nijinsky” in The Sacrifice (1983) is ‘n gedig wat dertig bladsye beslaan. Bidart dig oor moeilike persone wat teenstand moes oorkom. https://www.theparisreview.org/poetry/3235/the-war-of-vaslav-nijinsky-frank-bidart
Besoek 26 Februarie 2023
Die ellende van Vaslav teenoor die konkelende Diaghilev en die psigiese en fisiese ellende van Nijinski wat in 1919 opgeneem is in ‘n inrigting weens skisofrenia word in hierdie gedig ondersoek.
“Saying the unsaid”. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/11/frank-bidarts-poetry-of-saying-the-unsaid Besoek 26 Februarie 2023
Sy eie persoonlike lewe kom aan bod. Hierom kan hy buikspreker wees vir ander, die stemlose en verskoppelinge.
Bidart se tekste is lang belydenisse, dikwels onderbreek met prosa-opsommings. Dus ‘n soort dramateks met ‘n regisseur wat aanwysings gee.
“Ellen West” is ‘n belangrike gedig van Frank Bidart. Dit is gebaseer op Ludwig Binswanger se “Der Fall Ellen West”, ‘n analise van liggaamlikheid en eetversteuring.
Hier is ‘n gedeelte van ‘n gedig, ‘n monoloog, wat meer as 21 bladsye beslaan:
Callas is my favorite singer, but I’ve only
seen her once —;
I’ve never forgotten that night. . .
— It was in Tosca, she had long before
lost weight, her voice
had been, for years,
deteriorating, half itself. . .
When her career began, of course, she was fat,
enormous —; in the early photographs,
sometimes I almost don’t recognize her. . .
The voice too then was enormous —
healthy; robust; subtle; but capable of
crude effects, even vulgar,
almost out of
high spirits, too much health. . .
But soon she felt that she must lose weight,—
that all she was trying to express
was obliterated by her body,
buried in flesh —;
abruptly, within
four months, she lost at least sixty pounds. . .
— The gossip in Milan was that Callas
had swallowed a tapeworm.
But of course she hadn’t.
The tapeworm
was her soul. . .
— How her soul, uncompromising,
insatiable,
must have loved eating the flesh from her bones,
revealing this extraordinarily
mercurial; fragile; masterly creature. . .
— But irresistibly, nothing
stopped there; the huge voice
also began to change: at first, it simply diminished
in volume, in size,
then the top notes became
shrill, unreliable — at last,
usually not there at all. . .
— No one knows why. Perhaps her mind,
ravenous, still insatiable, sensed
that to struggle with the shreds of a voice
must make her artistry subtler, more refined,
more capable of expressing humiliation,
rage, betrayal. . .
— Perhaps the opposite. Perhaps her spirit
loathed the unending struggle
to embody itself, to manifest itself, on a stage whose
mechanics, and suffocating customs,
seemed expressly designed to annihilate spirit. . .
— I know that in Tosca, in the second act,
when, humiliated, hounded by Scarpia,
she sang Vissi d’arte
- “I lived for art” —
and in torment, bewilderment, at the end she asks,
with a voice reaching
harrowingly for the notes,
“Art has repaid me LIKE THIS?”
I felt I was watching
autobiography —
an art; skill;
virtuosity
miles distant from the usual soprano’s
athleticism,—
the usual musician’s dream
of virtuosity without content. . .
— I wonder what she feels, now,
listening to her recordings.
For they have already, within a few years,
begun to date. . .
Whatever they express
they express through the style of a decade
and a half —;
a style she helped create. . .
— She must know that now
she probably would not do a trill in
exactly that way,—
that the whole sound, atmosphere,
dramaturgy of her recordings
have just slightly become those of the past. . .
— Is it bitter? Does her soul
tell her
that she was an idiot ever to think
anything
material wholly could satisfy?. . .
— Perhaps it says: The only way
to escape
the History of Styles
is not to have a body.
II
Terrence McNally se Master Class (1995) is ‘n fiksionele drama oor Maria Callas. Sy gee ‘n meesterklas vir studente en is direk en hardhandig in haar aanwysings oor foute. Die drama word egter ‘n vertrekpunt vir háár herinneringe en dramatiese lewe. La Scala en die troebel verhouding met Aristotle Onassis, wat nie alleen haar hart gebreek het nie, maar die einde van haar stem beteken het. Weens die verhouding het sy nie meer geoefen nie en toe sy uiteindelik teruggekeer het na die verhoog, was haar glorie verby.
Wat hierdie teks ironies maak, is dat die lied in Tosca van toepassing word op háár: Vissi d’arte. (Ek het vir die kuns gelewe …)
Vir ‘n vertolking:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=callas+la+divina#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:3835e771,vid:7a5a3l0QCII Besoek 25 Februarie 2023
Sy het egter Giovanni Battista Meneghini, haar eggenoot verlaat vir Onassis wat weer op sy beurt betrokke geraak het by Jackie Kennedy. Dus dubbel-verraad.
Daar word ook geïntimeer dat Onassis haar deurgaans bly besoek het; tog sterf sy alleen en gebroke in Parys.
In die drama word daar ook gefokus op die nydighede tussen groot sangers.
La leçon de chant (The Singing Lesson), ‘n produksie van 1997 vertolk Fanny Ardant die hoofrol en Roman Polanski was die regisseur. Tans vertolk Sandra Prinsloo die rol in Theatre on the Bay met Magdalene Minnaar as die regisseur.
Prinsloo begryp die pyn van hierdie vrou en boots haar aksent en maniërismes perfek na.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRpzRSy_tvE Besoek 26 Februarie 2023
III
Vir hierdie digter is Callas eweneens ‘n boeiende en tragiese figuur.
Maria Callas (1923–1977)
Joan Hambidge
A woman sings with her ovaries – you’re only as good as your hormones.
– Carol Neblett
Vir Danie van Niekerk
La Divina,
temperamentis,
tessitura uniek;
die bybel van opera,
doop Leonard Bernstein
haar speels,
verewig
op ’n Griekse munt
haar asse gestrooi
in die Egeïese see
soos sy vra.
Haar stem
onlosmaaklik
deel van haar lyf:
eers gewigtig,
later afgeskaal.
Sy blameer glo
haar moeder, Evangelia,
vir haar skroom.
Sny haar los
van háár wat kleintyd
applous weerhou het
soos ’n ryke sy krummels
van ’n bedelaar.
Nimmer erkenning genoeg:
die media en operahuise
net ’n skynverblyf.
Telkens hunker sy
in herinnering
honger na haar moeder
se goedvinde terug,
na die suinige porsies
afgeweeg,
liefde op voorskrif.
Vaders vind sy elders:
Giovanni Battista Meneghini
vergoed vir haar vader se leuens
tot haar nemesis verskyn:
Onassis die goëlaar,
minnaar, befonkfaaier,
brutale vetsak,
’n eend wat munte
in die water afweeg –
tot Jacqueline Kennedy,
elegant en afgerond,
’n mooier, jonger diva
haar in die derde bedryf
lammermoor:
liefde, verraad, skandaal
uitgespeel in die openbaar
Sy kruip weg, verlore
in ’n glansbestaan,
vereensaam
tot haar terugkeer
met ’n stem wat vulgêr
en vals weerklink.
Lucia se waansin
het verruk,
haar ondergang aanskoulik;
Callas s’n speel af
in die stad van liefde en lig,
en in die staccato flitse
van paparazzi was alles
’n oop geheim.
Joan Hambidge
25 Februarie 2023
Bronne:
Bidart, Frank. Hier is van sy tekste:
- Golden State (1973)
- The Book of the Body (1977)
- The Sacrifice (1983)
- In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965–90 (1990)
- Desire (1997)
- Music Like Dirt (2002)
- Star Dust (2005)
- Watching the Spring Festival (2008)
- Metaphysical Dog (2013)
- Half-light: Collected Poems 1965–2016 (2017), winner of the National Book Award in Poetry and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
- Against Silence (2021)
Bekronings soos dit op die webruimte in Engels aangegee word:
- 1981 The Paris Review‘s first Bernard F. Conners Prize for “The War of Vaslav Nijinsky”
- 1991 Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation Writers’ Award
- 1992 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 1995 Morton Dauwen Zabel Award in Poetry given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters[11]
- 1997 Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America
- 2000 Wallace Stevens Award of The Academy of American Poets; subsequently elected a Chancellor of the Academy (2003)
- 2007 Bollingen Prize in American Poetry
- 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award (Poetry), winner for Metaphysical Dog
- 2013 National Book Award (Poetry), finalist for Metaphysical Dog
- 2014 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry
- 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award
- 2017 National Book Award in Poetry
- 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~cinichol/CreativeWriting/423/Bidart.htm Besoek 25 Februarie 2023
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/7424/the-art-of-poetry-no-105-frank-bid Besoek 26 Februarie 2023
Hambidge, Joan. 2021. Konfessies, kaarte en konterfeitsels. Pretoria: Imprimatur.