1. |
||||
2. |
||||
3. |
||||
The Rose (Ella Young)
The rose that blooms in Paradise
Burns with an ecstasy too sweet
For mortal eyes
But sometimes down the jasper walls
A petal falls
Toward earth and night
To lose it is to lose delight beyond compare
To have it is to have despair
|
||||
4. |
||||
The Crane (Tsurayuki, trans. Arthur Waley)
Its cry is mournful in the reed plane
as though it had called to mind something
which it wanted to forget.
|
||||
5. |
||||
The Waterfall (Ella Young)
O shouting multitudes
Leaping from crag to crag
Gesticulating
Wrestling with limbs intertwined
Why are you so eager to leave the sunlight
So eager for the pool of oblivion?
|
||||
6. |
||||
The Wind (Ella Young, Lao Tzu)
She is the slender-blossomed thorn,
She is the heartbeat of the Spring,
The faint sweet music before morn,
She, the light swallow on the wing.
Maid moon she is, so young and white,
Shy in the heaven's lordly dome.
I am the lonely wind of night,
I am the spent sea’s bitter foam.
I am drifted about as on the sea
I am carried by the wind as if I had nowhere to go.
|
||||
7. |
||||
The Street (Willard Motley)
Over the jail the wind blows, sharp and cold. Over the jail and over the car tracks the cold wind blows. The streetcar clangs east, turns down Alaska Avenue, and at a diagonal crosses Halstead Street. North and south runs Halstead, twenty miles long. Twelfth Street. Boys under lampposts, shooting craps, learning. Darkness behind the school where you smarten up, you come out with a pride and go look at all the good clothes in the shop windows and the swell cars whizzing past to Michigan Boulevard and start figuring out how you can get all these things. Down Maxwell Street where the prostitutes stand in the gloom-clustered doorways. Across Twelfth Street either way on Peoria are the old houses. The sad faces of the houses line the street like old men and women sitting along the veranda of an old folks' charity home.
Nick? Knock on any door down this street.
|
||||
8. |
||||
Lover (George Leite)
So now lost and turn blood into night into dark
it means the dearest and most burned is alone in the night in the black tarn
if you see the mad horse and he shows a yearning fear
Black stamp cuddle close it is almost time to shout it is almost time to scream
it is dark blood boils lost dark blood boils lost dark blood boils lost beauty
|
||||
9. |
||||
Soldiers —War—Another War
(Giuseppe Ungaretti, trans. William Fense Weaver)
Soldiers
We remain like leaves on the trees in autumn
War
Far away like a blind man they have led me by the hand
Another War
In this darkness with my frozen hands I can make out my face
I feel myself abandoned
|
||||
10. |
||||
Vanity (Giuseppe Ungaretti, trans. William Fense Weaver)
Suddenly tall on the ruins is the clear stupor of immensity
And the man bent over the water surprised by the sun makes himself out as a shadow
Rocked by the water and slowly shattered.
|
||||
11. |
||||
12. |
||||
13. |
||||
14. |
||||
Phase One—“Ring Around the moon . . .”
Ring around the moon—
Rain by noon!
Well, bless my soul!
|
||||
15. |
||||
Phase Two—“One, two, three, four . . . ”
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two—X-Y-Zee—
|
||||
16. |
||||
Phase Three—“Shake hands now, boys . . . ”
Shake hands now, boys, and at the sound of the bell come out fighting!
|
||||
17. |
||||
Phase Four—“Mumbo jumbo, hocus pocus, hoity toity, hotsy totsy . . . ”
Mumbo jumbo, hocus pocus, hoity toity, hotsy totsy, acey deucy, hoochy koochy, hinky dinky, heeby jeeby, harum scarum, helter skelter, honky tonky, palsy walsy, lovey dovey, pitter patter, teeter totter, tootsie wootsie, boogie woogie, piggy wiggy.
Razzle dazzle, rosy posy, georgie porgy, roly poly, walky talky, namby pamby, wishy washy, twiddle twaddle, tittle tattle, fiddle faddle, shilly shally, dilly dally, silly billy, willy nilly, fuddy duddy, hunky dory, teenie weenie, itsy bitsy.
Look out! He's got a gun!
|
||||
18. |
||||
19. |
||||
20. |
||||
21. |
||||
Act II, Scene 1
Comme ça te paraîtra drôle, quand je n’y serais plus, ce par quoi tu as passé. Quand tu n’auras plus mes bras sous ton cou, ni mon coeur pour t’y reposer, ni cette bouche sur tes yeux. Parce qu’il faudra que je m’en aille, très loin, un jour.
How queer it will seem to you when I am no longer here, all you have gone through. When you no longer have my arm beneath your head, nor my heart for resting place, nor these lips upon your eyes. For I shall have to go away, very far away, one day.
|
||||
22. |
||||
Act II, Scene 2
Au matin j’avais le regard si perdu et la contenance si morte, que ceux que j’ai rencontrés ne m’ont peut-être pas vu. Je disais adieu au monde dans d’espèces de romance. J’écrivais des silences, des nuits, je notais l’inexprimable. Je fixais des vertiges. Faim, soif, cris, danse, danse, danse, danse!
In the morning I had a look so lost, a face so dead, that perhaps those whom I met did not see me. In kinds of ballads I said farewell to the world. I wrote silences, I wrote the night. I recorded the inexpressible. I fixed frenzies in their flight. Hunger, thirst, shouts, dance, dance, dance, dance!
|
||||
23. |
||||
Act II, Scene 3
Je tombais dans des sommeils de plusieurs jours, et, levé, je continuais les rêves les plus tristes. La terreur venait. J’étais mûr pour le trépas, et par une route de dangers ma faiblesse me menait aux confins du monde et de la Cimmérie, patrie de l’ombre et des tourbillons.
I would fall into a slumber of days, and getting up would go on with the same sad dreams. Terror came. I was ripe for death and along a road of perils my weakness led me to the confines of the world and of Cimmeria, land of darkness and of whirlwinds.
|
||||
24. |
||||
Act III, Scene 1
N’eus-je pas une fois une jeunesse aimable, héroique, fabuleuse, à écrire sur des feuilles d’or, — trop de chance! Ah! les mille amours qui m’ont crucifié!
Had I not once a lovely youth, heroic, fabulous, to be written on sheets of gold, good luck to spare! Ah, the thousand loves that have crucified me!
|
||||
25. |
||||
Act III, Scene 2
Enfin, ô bonheur, ô raison, j’écartais du ciel l’azur qui est du noir, et je vécus, étincelle d’or de la lumière nature. De joie, je prenais une expression bouffonne et égarée au possible. Apprécions sans vertige l’étendue de mon innocence.
At last, O happiness, O reason, I brushed the sky the azure that is darkness, and I lived—gold spark of pure light. Out of joy I took on an expression as clownish and blank as possible. Let us contemplate undazed the endless reaches of my innocence.
|
||||
26. |
Ulysses at the Edge
06:38
|
New World Records Brooklyn, New York
Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc., which records under the label New World Records, was founded in 1975.
We are dedicated to the documentation of American music that is largely ignored by the commercial recording companies.
Streaming and Download help
If you like The Harry Partch Collection, Volume 1, you may also like:
Bandcamp Daily your guide to the world of Bandcamp