'... story-telling, like living, is omitting'

one of horsemouth's favourite tracks from howard's electronica period.

on may 6th 1909 blok was in venice still. 

he wrote;

'to give the past immortal life...

to give the impersonal a human form

and to make things yet unrealised come true.' 

but this was not used in the italian poems.  it was revised and published in 1914 in introduction to a collection called iambs - with the opening line 'oh I need terribly to live' in the first verse, 'even if I am stifled by life's heavy sleep' in the second and ending with two lines that were to be used as blok's epitaph 

'he was wholly a child of goodness and light,

he was the very spirit of triumphant freedom!' 

blok's time in italy was an encounter with the past and it made him aware of how weak russia's response to the future was. it was an encounter with the architecture and the art beginning with the silent  island of venice. (all these are lucy vogel's translations horsemouth suspects) horsemouth found some parallels with an article in artforum (summer 1966) from robert smithson on the new monumentality in art. 

'the future is but the obsolete in reverse' - vladimir nabokov (as smithson quotes him)

all that blok writes on the trip that does not directly concern italy he reworked and  collected elsewhere. his memories of italy he reworked over a number of years. 

but blok does not begin his italian poems with venice. 

'... story-telling, like living, is omitting' says cauadio magris. 

today, in blok's itinerary, we are leaving venice and travelling on to ravenna (which will be another city to feature heavily in the poems. .

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yesterday horsemouth made two trips up onto the  common (it is very muddy up there). he helped his dad with his tv ariel experiments (briefly). it was a rainy and grey day. he had a bottle of beer. he did a sudoku. he read the torygraph business pages (which seem to be touting a UK bank run). 

today horsemouth is up early. he has just annoyed the dog (who is also getting old) not his intention. fortunately the dog seems to have forgiven him (or forgotten).