A Mammal's Notebook: The Collected Writings of Erik Satie

ISBN-13: 9781900565660 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014 / 224 str.

Erik Satie; Ornella Volta; Antony Melville

Opis

This is the largest selection, in any language, of the writings of Erik Satie (1866-1925). Although once dismissed as an eccentric, Satie has come to be seen as a key influence on modern music, and his writings reveal him as one of the most beguiling of absurdists, in the mode of Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear--but with a strong streak of Dadaism (a movement in which he participated). The nonconformism of Satie's private life seems deliberately calculated: he assumed various personae at different periods of his life, from the mystical -velvet gentleman- to the Dadaist disguised as quizzical bureaucrat. His poignant, sly and witty writings embody all of his contradictions. Included here are his -autobiographical- -Memoirs of an Amnesic-; gnomic annotations to his musical scores (-For the Shrivelled and the Dimwits, I have written a suitably ponderous chorale ... I dedicate this chorale to those who do not like me-); the publications of his private church; his absurdist play Medusa's Snare; advertising copy for his local suburban newspaper; and the mysterious, calligraphed -private advertisements- found stuffed behind his piano after his death. Satie referred to himself as -a man in the manner of Adam (he of Paradise)- and added: -My humor is reminiscent of Cromwell's.I am also indebted to Christopher Columbus, as the American spirit has sometimes tapped me on the shoulder, and I have joyfully felt its ironically icy bite.- He died as he lived: -without quite ceasing to smile.-