Human Side Podcast 14: Shalamov / Crazy Days in Budapest

Discussion of a forthcoming Human Side Press translation of gulag poetry from Varlam Shalamov (fall 2018), followed by talk of Budapest in the late '90s and a Hungarian female stalker.

Human Side Podcast 13: The Shaman

Is there an "antidote" to alienation in the West? Part III of a series of podcasts on Jordan Peterson and philosophy as therapy.

Human Side Podcast 12: Critique of Jordan Peterson

Jordan Peterson now leads a vast internet army. What are the implications for his thinking? A discussion with reference to the English philosopher John Gray, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the great theorist of crowds, Elias Canetti.

Human Side Podcast 11: Jordan Peterson / Order & Chaos

Discussion of the work of Jordan Peterson, Nietzsche, James C Scott, Wittgenstein and others.

"The Letter Carrier's Satchel" by Varlam Shalamov

a translation of "СУМКА ПОЧТАЛЬОНА" from Колымские тетради

Frigid, the hours at nighttime,
In monstrous disquietude,
To the sky I send up my call sign
from the seventieth latitude.

Warming at a fire somewhere,
May a bearded geologist,
Locate my position there
On this cursed mountain,

Where, like Tannhäuser and Venus,
A captive of barren snows,
Having lived twenty years in a cave,
Misery, the only dream I know.

Still, longing to break free,
my shoulders like Samson heaving,
to bring down this vault of stone,
so many years I've imagined leaving.

          *  *  *

I held on to that fairy tale —
Until that fairy tale was dead.
Its human caress
had long since fled.

A moth in a snowstorm,
She was hidden,
To the light she came,
To the window bidden.

The flakes of snow
Became moths in crowds,
A flutter of wings let loose
From the low clouds.

Out into the snowy distance
With a tear on my cheek,
Through my fingers the delicate
White pollen sweeps.

          *  *  *

In memory are great evils disguised — 
In number and degree unperceived.
While in life lies, only lies,
In it we can no longer believe.

Maybe, the cities are gone,
Gone too the orchard's trees,
Only the power of ice lives on,
and the briny seas.

Maybe, the world — is only snow,
A road lit by stars.
Maybe, the world — is only taiga,
In God's mind, not ours.

          *  *  *

I — Archimedes — fishing upon the sand,
In the swift shadows of the mind,
On a crumpled, tattered page in hand
Have this poem's last line signed.

I — Archimedes — will not avert my gaze
from these vague stanzas' theoretical resolution.
In those moments of life in my last days —
Another line in this poem's evolution.

I know for me this is no game or test,
But deadly. It is for life itself played.
I — Archimedes — will not let my pen rest,
And this notebook must not be mislaid.

Human Side Podcast 10: Pabst Blue Ribbon

Technical problems destroyed nearly all of a 3.5 hour podcast on cultural Marxism, leaving only these 3 minutes about Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer.

"Red Lily of the Valley" poetry by Varlam Shalamov

a translation of "РОЗОВЫЙШ ЛАНДЫШ" from Колымские тетради

Upon a saint's tomb laid
Placed above a headstone
A wreath of flowers in braid,
In the purest blood soaked.

With glossy, sagging petals,
Heavy with dew.
Displaying delicate tendrils,
in all its beauty on view.

And shy and clearly scared,
blossoms to the earth bowed,
like a child's trembling hands
hanging from its boughs.

But these pinkish clusters
Among rags of pale-green
Will tomorrow flower in bluster,
Into a blazing, fiery scene.

And, like a bloody tear,
Like Macbeth's ghost,
It will draw our eyes here,
in its tumult engrossed.

From these eyes blood flows,
And turning to the setting sun
We are before it froze,
by some shame unknown.

As if we could live another way,
and read from other books.
And not from a graveyard bouquet
was it the truth we took.

And we kiss the petals,
And to something make our prayer.
They tell us: Its all nothing special —
Of our smile they are unaware.

I hear it, like grass growing,
These new flowers breaking through.
I feel it, into words transposing,
and compose this poem for you.