Witchy Vocals

The Venezuelan artist José Luis Troconis Barazarte publishes in Ciudad Valencia an article, a poem, a short story, and an illustration (on the right, source), all devoted to the Brontës, particularly Emily:

Cuando Charlotte descubrió por azar los cuadernos secretos donde Emily anotaba sus poemas, la furia de esta última fue salvaje. Consideraba que sus versos pertenecían a su intimidad inviolable. Sin embargo, aquel hallazgo propició la publicación conjunta del poemario de las tres hermanas en 1846, cobijadas bajo los nombres masculinos de Currer, Ellis y Acton Bell. La poesía de Emily, atribuida entonces a Ellis, reveló de inmediato una voz de pureza cortante, despojada de adornos retóricos, donde Dios, la naturaleza y la muerte se miraban sin intermediarios, con una hondura metafísica que superaba cualquier lirismo convencional de su tiempo.

Al año siguiente vio la luz su única novela, Cumbres Borrascosas, concebida con esa misma madera seca y resistente. Mientras sus contemporáneos escribían relatos de costumbres y lecciones morales bienhechoras, Emily entregó en las páginas de Cumbres Borrascosas una obra que parecía esculpida por el viento del invierno. No hubo en sus letras afán de halagar el gusto del público ni temor a escandalizar la mojigatería victoriana. En su escritura no hay espacio para la queja blanda ni para la compasión postiza. Todo en ella es concisión, filo de navaja y un temblor antiguo que nombra la tierra herida con la exactitud de quien conoce el peso exacto de cada silencio. (Translation)

The best debut albums written by female artists according to Grunge, include Kate Bush's The Kick Inside:

Of all the instances of young prodigies penning music far beyond their years, there may be none more mind-boggling than Kate Bush writing "Wuthering Heights" at 18 years old. What's even more impressive, though, is that "Wuthering Heights" is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the raucous, irrepressible brilliance on display across "The Kick Inside," Bush's multifaceted 1978 breakout. (...)

 And, because Bush was a genius, her claim to freedom argued for itself; there was no listening to "Oh To Be in Love" or "Them Heavy People" or "James and the Cold Gun" — or, indeed, to the enrapturing perfection of "Wuthering Heights"— without inferring that this is what modern auteur-driven songcraft could and should be. (Leo Noburu Lima) 

Far Out Magazine explores the song itself and its serendipitous creation:

While it is Bush’s immense, witchy vocals that first entrap any listener of the towering 1978 ballad, the soaring, emotional electric guitar solo was the genius of Pilot guitarist Ian Bairnson and his cherry sunburst 1974 Gibson Les Paul Custom.

An avid trail-bike racer away from the studio, Bairnson took to Edinburgh’s rolling hills to perform some tricks with his Pilot bandmate and biker, David Paton. It was here that the guitarist flew off the bike and broke his wrist. That’s a pretty catastrophic injury for a guitarist… on paper. In this case, it might be the secret ingredient to a song that has now been streamed well over 300,000,000 times.

“When we got back to the house, I said, ‘Tomorrow, you’ll be fine. You’ve just sprained it,’ without realising that he’d actually broken it. It began to swell up quite a bit, so we took him to the hospital and he got a cast put on. And we knew that the session was coming up…” Paton recalled.

Bairnson turned up at the studio shortly thereafter to record ‘Wuthering Heights’ with his arm encased in plaster; you’d be forgiven for thinking the session would be postponed, and assuming time stood still until all parties were fit and able to play their part uninjured. But the breakneck pace woven into the song’s very fabric, written in one evening and recorded in one sweeping take, simply meant that the show must go on. (rubybrown)

Alfemminile (Italy) rediscovers the poetry of Emily Brontë:

Chi cerca nei versi di Emily un diario sentimentale o qualche indizio sulle sue passioni segrete rischia di rimanere deluso: la sua poesia appartiene a un altrove fantastico, abitato da presenze che parlano di prigionia, desiderio, perdita e libertà.

E quando sconfina da quell'universo, sembra inseguire qualcosa che oltrepassi i confini dell'esistenza concreta, un'estasi trascendentale degna di una mistica. La natura diventa una presenza immensa, talvolta minacciosa; l'anima aspira a un'indipendenza che il corpo non può concederle.

Emily aveva conosciuto, e mal sopportato, il mondo esterno: studiò, viaggiò e lavorò per brevi periodi lontano da Haworth. Ma la sua vera patria, forse, era quella che aveva nutrito nella propria mente. Una donna che sembra essersi sentita per tutta la vita qualcosa di diverso, più spirito che essere umano, e che attraverso la scrittura poteva finalmente abitare una realtà abbastanza grande da contenerla. (Maya Artusi Moro) (Translation)

Ouest-France (France) lists some recent novels that could have been awarded some prize (but weren't):

Pour son quatrième roman, Lilia Hassaine plonge dans l’œuvre culte de Charlotte Brontë et imagine la vie de Bertha Mason, que l’on croise dans les pages de « Jane Eyre ». Durant les 256 pages de « Je », l’autrice et journaliste écrit depuis le point de vue de celle à qui elle redonne le prénom d’Antoinette et retrace sa funeste relation avec Edward Rochester, de la Jamaïque jusqu’à la campagne anglaise. Dans le roman de Charlotte Brontë publié en 1847, Bertha est démente. Son mariage avec Edward Rochester est basé sur un mensonge de son père, qui a tu les antécédents familiaux. Lilia Hassaine inverse les rôles et écrit une autre histoire, dans la veine du travail de Jean Rhys, qui avait consacré un préquel au personnage. Dans « Je », Antoinette est une femme saine d’esprit, aimante, entraînée dans une vertigineuse descente aux enfers orchestrée par son époux. Glaçant et moderne. (Florence Pitard) (Translation)

Ghosts, as seen by Irene Vallejo in La Tercera (Chile):

En los primeros momentos del duelo, no deseamos escapar de la memoria, no queremos volver a la vida normal. La idea misma del consuelo suena a deserción, a falsedad, a despropósito. Durante las horas vacías, invitamos al espectro, le rogamos que nos obsesione y embruje nuestra casa. Así lo cuenta Emily Brontë, con torrencial romanticismo, en Cumbres borrascosas. Los protagonistas se enamoran, se traicionan y se aniquilan el uno al otro con desamparada crueldad. Parecen empeñados en destruir toda posibilidad de final feliz, pero cada vez se necesitan más. Cuando Catherine está a punto de morir, Heathcliff le suplica que lo persiga: “Hay espíritus que andan errantes por el mundo. Quédate siempre conmigo, toma cualquier forma, vuélveme loco. Pero no me dejes solo”. Emily escribió la novela mientras cuidaba a su hermano, enfermo de tuberculosis, durante largas vigilias agónicas. En su libro, las apariciones expresan un deseo que reconocemos bien: la permanencia del ser amado. Ella, la recluida hija de un pastor anglicano, pensaba que la fantasía es un distrito de lo cotidiano. Los fantasmas existen –aunque no sean reales– porque los necesitamos. No sabemos vivir sin los muertos. (Translation)

Ann Jefferson, biographer of Nathalie Sarraute, discusses her figure in Le Monde (France):

L’Angleterre l’a aussi marquée sur le plan littéraire. La personnalité d’Emily Brontë a compté pour elle, et plus tard l’œuvre de Virginia Woolf, découverte dans les années 1920 en même temps que celle de James Joyce, cet autre grand représentant de la modernité littéraire. (Translation)

 Today, on BBC Radio 3:

Sounds of Silence

Words and Music (November 8, 19:45)

To mark Armistice Day, Words & Music takes up the theme of silence.

From the devotional searching of Bach’s Actus tragicus, via Haydn’s String Quartet called The Joke, which ends with deliberate pauses from the players, to the experimental explorations of modernists like György Ligeti, silence has meant different things to different composers. Before and after live performances, conductors try to hold a silence in the concert hall, and in recordings of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler left long gaps between the famous opening notes.

In literature too, the meanings of silence range from the awkward in Jane Austen to the stultifying in Charlotte Brontë [fragments of Jane Eyre and the poem Evening Solace]. via peacefulness in Wordsworth to the meditative in mystic writings of the Sufi poet Rumi.

And the meanings of silence in wartime are explored by the poet Ivor Gurney and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

The readers are Sian Clifford, seen on TV this summer in the latest series of Ludwig, and Ray Fearon, who has just finished appearing on stage in Headlong's production of Fences.