‘Poetic’ novels

[redhead]

At risk of becoming as repetitive in my recommendations as Jon Fosse is in his prose, I think his novels fit. His simple, hypnotic pieces are written with a poet’s touch.

There’s also Tolkien. I recently read The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun by him, essentially his take on what medieval Icelandic versions of those Germanic lays may have been like (we know they existed, but have been lost to us). Written with all the brief power of the poems in the Poetic Edda, though easier to follow.

Samuel Delany is also great. The Einstein Intersection is a wonderful far future reworking of Greek myths, hung together with beautiful language.

And, though they aren’t novels, I’d recommend the notebooks of Olav Hauge and Hojoki. The former is written with all the wisdom and poeticism of Hauge’s poems, the latter is a short Buddhist text from medieval Japan that’s as austere and sublime as the best haiku.

 

[Liam]

Also, though I'm not really a big fan of this writer, there is Alessandro Baricco's gorgeously written novella Silk. When I first read it I thought it smacked of obvious Orientalism, but I have since changed my mind. I think the book, on the contrary, demonstrates the protagonist's inner blindness: he is so besotted with the idea of Japan, and the beautiful young Japanese woman he meets when he travels there, that it leaves him open to be duped by everyone around him, including his wife (who mainly does it out of love). The film adaptation captures this rather well, I think.

 

[tiganeasca]

I hope some of these blur the lines of novel and poetry enough for you—

?? James Toomer - Cane

One teeny correction: it's Jean Toomer, not James.

 

[hayden]

One teeny correction: it's Jean Toomer, not James.

Of course, woops. Appreciate it. Fixed.

 

[Leseratte]

I'd like to contribute with a single poetic novel: Clarice Lispector's Agua Viva, in which the author, in the virtually plotless book, tries to express the mutability of being itself, and the experience of living in the ever present state of time, in all its anguished lows, and ecstatic heights.

Quite forgot that one!
Trying to redeem myself for forgetting it:
Here is the first paragraph of Água Viva in English:
" IT'S WITH SUCH PROFOUND HAPPINESS. SUCH A HALLElujah. Hallelujah, I shout, hallelujah merging with the darkest human howl of the pain of separation but a shout of diabolic joy. Because no one can hold me back now. I can still reasonI studied mathematics, which is the madness of reason - but now I want the plasma-I want to eat straight from the placenta. I am a little scared: scared of surrendering completely because the next instant is the unknown. The next instant, do I make it? or does it make itself? We make it together with our breath. And with the flair of the bullfighter in the ring. "
(Translation by Stefan Tobler, edited and introduced by Benjamin Moser)

 

[Cleanthess]

Poetic prose often suffers from SUCH a high concentration of "poetry" that it becomes almost unreadable, losing all sight of plot, characterization, etc: which are the primary qualities, I would argue, of any good prose work.

Nobel Prize winner Ivan Bunin's stories are an example of this. According to those who read him in Russian (Languagehat), he's superb. Reading him in translation might be superbly painful, like listening to a Mozart piano and violin sonata transposed into dodecaphonic rows.

There are some writers who can get their poetic prose mixed with enough plot and/or humor to get it to work. H. C. Andersen's fairy tales are an example, Nobel Prize winner J. V. Jensen's stories from his "The Mythical and the Hunted" are another example.

I was surprised by Jensen's fractured fables and desiccated horror stories. Like Dickens, like Andersen, like Kafka, his prose has its own unique flavor seasoned with sadness, darkness and laughter. Jensen's anthropomorphizations are not as transparent as, say, Kipling's political fables (The Mother Hive), but they're not as opaque and mysterious as Kafka's (Jackals and Arabs or "The animal wrests the whip from its master and whips itself in order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the master's whiplash").

Let me quote the ending of a tale from Jensen's collection mentioned above, The Spider

[The young spider and his bride] got married. On the wedding day, Mrs. Spider ate her new husband and hung his skeleton, or more correctly his carcass, outside her door. There he hung in her web and swayed back and forth with the slightest breeze, so light as a feather had he become. At first glance it seemed to be our complete male spider, but he was hollow, his legs were hollow, his body a withered husk, he was only a shell of himself.

A bachelor centipede, who lived under a rock nearby, and who had witnessed this marital drama, later told, but bear in mind: this centipede was a cynic, that he had seldom seen an expression of such deep joy as in the young idealist spider when he was finally being eaten. He looked like happiness personified, the centipede said, as he was being absorbed and becoming one with the universe. After surviving the wedding ceremony, he had been very proud at first, but then an inexplicable fear overcame him, which dragged him further and further away until it turned into the aforementioned bliss of death. The centipede curled up with laughter like an S and spread his pincers wide as if he wanted to pull a nail out from the vault of heaven. And the ground beetle, to whom he was telling what he had seen, scurried away through the grass like a ship on the high seas to spread the news of this priceless story.

 

[Liam]

^Agree re: Bunin, his short story cycle Dark Alleys (or Dark Avenues; in Russian: Темные Аллеи) is superb! Each little piece reads like a poem-in-prose. It also includes the most heartbreaking short story I have EVER read, about a mentally challenged young peasant girl who gets seduced (raped?) by a rich landowner's son, gets pregnant, and subsequently gets thrown out of the house with her young child. The last "image" you see described by the narrator is of her walking down the road, holding her little son's hand. I cried my eyes out, ?

 

[Benny Profane]

We forgot the best "poetic" novel of last years, guys:

???? Herta Müller - The Hunger Angel

 

[Leseratte]

We forgot the best "poetic" novel of last years, guys:

???? Herta Müller - The Hunger Angel

Thanks for the suggestion, Benny. I'll see if iy is available at the online Goethe,

 

[Benny Profane]

Thanks for the suggestion, Benny. I'll see if iy is available at the online Goethe,

There is a translation into Portuguese as Tudo o Que Eu Tenho Eu Levo Comigo.

 

[Leseratte]

Goethe online has the book in Spanish. Any one can register to borrow E-books, provided he/she lives outside a German speaking country.

 

[Morbid Swither]

This is a difficult thread for me because my knee-jerk response is that all the books I love are poetic…—Then I realize that’s really not true. Not all the great books are. But on some level most of my favorites are. I think that Henry Miller and Jean Genet are very poetic. But there is lyricism in William Kennedy and Annie Proulx. Tim Winton’s The Shepherd’s Hut. Toni Morrison. I’m surprised how many contemporary readers are unimpressed with By Grand Central Station, I Set Down And Wept. And so poetic to me are the autofiction of Abdellah Taïa. The list goes on. Gary/Garielle Lutz may have the most poetic prose style I know, if not: Antonio Tabucchi. Vesaas: The Birds. Helprin: Winter’s Tale. Le Clézio: Ètoile errant.

 

[JCamilo]

At risk of becoming as repetitive in my recommendations as Jon Fosse is in his prose, I think his novels fit. His simple, hypnotic pieces are written with a poet’s touch.

There’s also Tolkien. I recently read The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun by him, essentially his take on what medieval Icelandic versions of those Germanic lays may have been like (we know they existed, but have been lost to us). Written with all the brief power of the poems in the Poetic Edda, though easier to follow.

I found it so bad, his poetry is stiff as Voltaire´s poetry, with the difference, the worst Voltaire has agility and witty. I prefer much more William Morris take on those stories. He has that victorian style which Tennison perfected (his narrative poems are close to what Liam is probally talking about Nabokov about the guy being unable to write a bad line, in a sense those victorian writers were great storytellers).

Brazilians pardon if they already mentioned, but João Cabral de Melo Neto and his Morte e Vida Severina could be mentioned here. It is a perfect sample of the specific language of the northest region that is powerful enough to became universal, being so well adapted by Chico Buarque to a musical that João Cabral himself started to say that people would only think Chico as the author of the work.

 

[tiganeasca]

Ondaatje's English Patient and, as Liam mentioned earlier, Durrell's Alexandria Quartet.

Two others who occur to me are Georges Rodenbach (Bruges-la-Morte) and J.K. Huysmans (A Rebours/Against Nature).

 

[redhead]

I found it so bad, his poetry is stiff as Voltaire´s poetry, with the difference, the worst Voltaire has agility and witty. I prefer much more William Morris take on those stories. He has that victorian style which Tennison perfected (his narrative poems are close to what Liam is probally talking about Nabokov about the guy being unable to write a bad line, in a sense those victorian writers were great storytellers).

Lol, to each their own. I didn’t mind the stiffness and liked the compactness, it reminded me of some of the old Edda poems I’ve read. I guess I enjoyed it because Tolkien avoided a more modern style like you mention Morris using.

 

[Leseratte]

A bit of visual poetry: Camilo mentioned Morte e Vida Severina by João Cabral de Melo Neto. I think I posted this animated illustration in The Recently Finished Books thread But I´m posting it again, as I didn´t know how to link it.
It is so expressive and so well done, That one can get an idea of the story even without understanding the text.

 

[Benny Profane]

Brazilians pardon if they already mentioned, but João Cabral de Melo Neto and his Morte e Vida Severina could be mentioned here. It is a perfect sample of the specific language of the northest region that is powerful enough to became universal, being so well adapted by Chico Buarque to a musical that João Cabral himself started to say that people would only think Chico as the author of the work.

I don't think so.
Morte e Vida: Severina is an epic poetry (or drama in verses) and, in my opinion, doesn't sound like a poetic novel.
It sounds like a proleratian play and is the answer for Orfeu da Conceição (Black Orpheu) by Vinicius de Moraes (which adapted into a film and won the Oscar in 1960).
But I can see Sousândrade's O Guesa (The Guesa) as a proto-modern/avant-garde poetic novel, specially its Canto X which was written in 1878 and was very advanced for that period.
The Canto X was renamed as Hell in Wallstreet by de Campos brothers in 1962 and sounds like a early post-modern novel (with non-sense dialogues and proto-stream of consciousness) and proto-dadaist poetry.

There is Cobra Norato by Raul Bopp which could be classified as a poetic novel too, but in my opnion it is an epic poetry in free verses.

 

[Liam]

I think most, if not all writers eventually develop a unique rhythm they call their own (also known as voice, language, style, etc) but this is not to be confused with a voice/language/style that is deliberately poetic, as in the case of Nabokov.

There is poetry in Middlemarch, for sure, but I don't think anyone would call that book "poetic" despite the fact that the sentences are quite chiseled.

Or Coetzee's Disgrace, with its nearly perfect minimalist prose.

At least that isn't what I think the original poster meant, ?

 

[Leseratte]

I don't think so.
Morte e Vida: Severina is an epic poetry (or drama in verses) and, in my opinion, doesn't sound like a poetic novel.
It sounds like a proleratian play and is the answer for Orfeu da Conceição (Black Orpheu) by Vinicius de Moraes (which adapted into a film and won the Oscar in 1960).
But I can see Sousândrade's O Guesa (The Guesa) as a proto-modern/avant-garde poetic novel, specially its Canto X which was written in 1878 and was very advanced for that period.
The Canto X was renamed as Hell in Wallstreet by de Campos brothers in 1962 and sounds like a early post-modern novel (with non-sense dialogues and proto-stream of consciousness) and proto-dadaist poetry.

There is Cobra Norato by Raul Bopp which could be classified as a poetic novel too, but in my opnion it is an epic poetry in free verses.

I agree with you, Benny. Morte e Vida Severina was originally intended as a Christmas play.

 

[Leseratte]

I was looking for an article on "poetic prose" or "poetic novel, but I didn´t succeed. Google keeps inverting the proposition and offering me "prose poem" or "novel in verse". Maybe the concept in English is different as in Portuguese or less usual.
IMHO, one can recognize poetic prose first of all by it´s rich, rhythmic flow of imagery and other poetic devices:
"riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend
of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to
Howth Castle and Environs.

Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen-
core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy
isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor
had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse
to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper
all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to
tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a
kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in
vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a
peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory
end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface. "

https://archive.org/stream/finneganswake00joycuoft/finneganswake00joycuoft_djvu.txt

If I understand 20% of these first pargraphs of "Finnegans Wake" it is much. But the sound with it´s beautiful flow reminds me indeed of a running river.

And the beginning of Rosa´s Grande Sertão Veredas translated by Alison Entrekin:

" Nonought. Shots you heard weren’t a shootout, God be. I was training sights on trees in the backyard, at the bottom of the creek. Keeps my aim good. Do it every day, I enjoy it; have since the tendrest age. Anyhow, folks came a calling. Bout a calf: white one, strayling, eyes like no thing ever seen and a dog’s mask. They told me; I didn’t want to see. Seems it was defective from birth, lips curled back, and looked to be laughing, person-like. Human face, hound face: they decided—it was the devil. Oafenine bunch. They killed it. Nought a clue bout the owner. They came to beg my guns, I let em. I’m not superstitious. You got a way of laughing, sir . . . Look: when shots are for real, first the dogs set up barking that instant—then you go see if anyone’s dead. Don’t mind, sir, this is the sertão. Some reckon it in’t: the backlands are further off, they say, the campos-gerais inside and out, back-o-beyond, high plains, far side of the Urucúia. Lottarot. To folks in Corinto and Curvelo, in’t this here the sertão? Ah, and that’s not all! The sertão makes itself known: it’s where pastures have no fences, they say; where a man can go fifteen, twenty miles without coming to a single house; where outlaws live out their hallelujah, in the yonder beyond the law. "

Grande Sertão: Veredas (Bedeviled in the Badlands) by João Guimarães Rosa - Words Without Borders

The following is an excerpt from the new translation of João Guimarães Rosa’s magnum opus, Grande Sertão: Veredas, first published in English in 1963.

www.wordswithoutborders.org