Bukowski is a "puzzling" author
- Thread starter cirerita
- Start date
I found the lines in Juvenal, Satire VII, 50-52:
nam si discedas, laqueo tenet ambitiosi
consuetudo mali, tenet insanabile multos
scribendi cacoethes et aegro in corde senescit.
These and surrounding lines translated by Peter Green:
You can't
escape you're caught in the noose of bad ambitious
habit; there are so many possessed by an incurable
endemic writer's itch that becomes a sick obsession.
But the outstanding poet, one who mines no common seam,
smelts down no reworked slag, strikes no debased
poetic currency, minted with populist platitudes--
I can't hink of one just now, still I'm sure they exist--
Etymology is kakos/Greek= "bad" and ethos/Greek="character/dispostion" so "the bad disposition to write" [scribendi/Latin/write]. It's odd but I always had the feeling that it meant a "shit eating writer" but I'm too lazy now to look up whether English slang "ca-ca" for shit is related to Greek "kakos" for "bad". It may be. OK. There's a thread somewhere where someone mentions that Kenneth Rexroth was called Cacoethes in Kerouac's Dharma Bums so there's another interesting connection
Ola, Cirerita! und wie gehts Johannes in Osterreich? Here is a scan of Cacoethes Scibendi. Cheers!
nam si discedas, laqueo tenet ambitiosi
consuetudo mali, tenet insanabile multos
scribendi cacoethes et aegro in corde senescit.
These and surrounding lines translated by Peter Green:
You can't
escape you're caught in the noose of bad ambitious
habit; there are so many possessed by an incurable
endemic writer's itch that becomes a sick obsession.
But the outstanding poet, one who mines no common seam,
smelts down no reworked slag, strikes no debased
poetic currency, minted with populist platitudes--
I can't hink of one just now, still I'm sure they exist--
Etymology is kakos/Greek= "bad" and ethos/Greek="character/dispostion" so "the bad disposition to write" [scribendi/Latin/write]. It's odd but I always had the feeling that it meant a "shit eating writer" but I'm too lazy now to look up whether English slang "ca-ca" for shit is related to Greek "kakos" for "bad". It may be. OK. There's a thread somewhere where someone mentions that Kenneth Rexroth was called Cacoethes in Kerouac's Dharma Bums so there's another interesting connection
Ola, Cirerita! und wie gehts Johannes in Osterreich? Here is a scan of Cacoethes Scibendi. Cheers!
bospress.net
www.bospress.net
Hi,
Amazing! Did Buk ever meet Burnett? Did the description fit him? Anyone else it could have been?
Bill
Thanks, David. A very interesting read. It goes to show how much Buk's style changed over the years. I wouldn't have pegged that as one of Buk's works.
I don't suppose you could post scans of those other two? :eek:
Bukfan
"The law is wrong; I am right"
Thanks, David! There must be a lot of Buk stuff in those old mags that never have been collected...
mjp
Founding member
Well, you could also say that he was an immature writer in the 1940's. All of that early stuff reads a bit clever to me. Maybe the near-death experience of the bleeding ulcer knocked all the bullshit out of him. ;)
Hard Without Music.
Petey
RIP
It seems his first alter ego was a guy called Cholaski and not Chelaski.
https://bukowskiforum.com/showthread.php?t=68&highlight=matrix
https://bukowskiforum.com/showthread.php?t=68&highlight=matrix
The "e" on Buk's typer was not working well (check "Soft and Fat Like Summer Roses" on the preceeding page). Also, when Buk opens the story in all caps, it's clearly Chelaski.
No problem, Petey.
As for the story; it's funny (strange) because it involves Buk as an "outsider" (I know this discussion has occurred elsewhere; outside the mainstream of society - alone yet with people, is what I mean), but with a much more innocent/less jaded persepective. I liked it, but I suppose part of why I liked it is because it was Buk and it gave me some insight into his very early work. If someone else had written it, it probabaly wouldn't have been as interesting to me.
As for the story; it's funny (strange) because it involves Buk as an "outsider" (I know this discussion has occurred elsewhere; outside the mainstream of society - alone yet with people, is what I mean), but with a much more innocent/less jaded persepective. I liked it, but I suppose part of why I liked it is because it was Buk and it gave me some insight into his very early work. If someone else had written it, it probabaly wouldn't have been as interesting to me.
Yes, I think it becomes a kind of metaphor for "don't try." The baseball game of life, and he just doesn't see the point of it. He's in the game, but it's absurd. Note the odd details throughout: the woman with the green dress in the stands, the bird flying about, the crowd...Everything narrated from this sort of detached point of view.
Yes, so in that way it is thematically similar to much of his later work, but stylistically it is quite different. And the subject matter is more pop culture than dirty underbelly. So he already had the same point of view we've come to read about in later work, but the subject is more pedestrian. It seems mjp was correct when he mused that the ulcer incident knocked the bullshit out of him.
i agree with you on this mjp and Purple.
still i wouldn't consider it 'bullshit' or 'bad writing'. it's still far better than most things you read elsewhere.
and there seems to be a reason for his writing-style in these days.
well worth detailed analysis.
I think you can see him groping his way towards his own style. But it's already there the prototype is there. I've been playing Beethoven's C-Major Piano Sonata--I think It's Opus 3, number 1--and it's very early Beethoven and he sounds a little like Haydn but the thunder is there already. This Chelaski guy out there on the field, isn't he a bit like Camus' Stranger? He doesn't want to play the game. Can you blame him? Anyway, I like the story alot.
Interesting; very much like Meursault in his detachment. And yes, you can see the seeds of something that we eventually saw in full bloom. I'm not sure one could see the same thing without having read the later successful material. I'm fairly sure that I could not.
Yes, I would have used a milder word. But the concept is there; it looks like that ulcer really put him into another zone.