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Christina Tudor-Sideri

@dreamsofbeing.bsky.social

1.5K followers 1.2K following 460 posts

writer, translator, and researcher whose work unfolds at the crossroads of literature, philosophy, and critical theory (currently writing about relics and time)

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Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · Aug 24

Forthcoming: www.erratumpress.com/reliquary

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Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 1h

A day like an afterthought lost in the blue smoke of a repetitive gesture. A prophetic utterance that nevertheless does not come into being. A day of notetaking and indulging in despair. A day framed by silence and the stillness beneath every movement. And perhaps that is enough.

Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 1h

“Yet still, she dreamt of sending letters, dreamt in the manner of Mandelstam.”

The Body, Jenny Boully

Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 1h

Her reply, on November 10, is one of their longest, most beautiful, and most heartbreaking letters. “Sometimes I live and breathe only through [your poems].”

Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 1h

“And you, Inge? Are you working? Tell me something about that, will you?

Let me know everything that can be communicated, and, beyond that, perhaps occasionally one of those quieter words that come when one is alone, and can only speak into the distance. I shall then do likewise.”

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Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 1h

Can you tell? I act, I wander past all the houses in the area, I am running after myself… If only I really knew what hour has struck! But was it really in front of my door, the stone I am trying to roll away? Oh, the word only comes to me through the air and—I fear once again—in my sleep.

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Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 1h

“Sometimes, the poem seems like a mask that only exists because the others need something from time to time to hide their sanctified, grotesque everyday faces.”

Paul Celan to Ingeborg Bachmann, October 1951; tr. Wieland Hoban

Difficult to be in Paris again: searches for a room and for people both disappointing. Lonely times cloaked in chatter, dissolved snow landscape, private secrets whispered to the public. In short, an entertaining game with gloom—naturally, in the service of literature. Sometimes, the poem seems like a mask that only exists because the others need something from time to time to hide their sanctified, grotesque everyday faces.
But enough of these malicious words this earth is round enough, after all, and this autumn the chestnuts in Paris have blossomed a second time.

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Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 17h

At night, between one disappearance and the next, the lingering warmth of might-have-beens.

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Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 1d

An afternoon with Munch and Racine. “In the depths of the forest your image follows me.”

The Private Journals of Edvard Munch: We Are Flames Which Pour Out of the Earth

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Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 1d

Edvard Munch; tr. J. Gill Holland

—I am writing a book
—and now I shall bore a hole in the boat
—the whole ark will
sink—

Reposted by Christina Tudor-Sideri

Draught @draughtjournal.bsky.social · 1d

'like swallows beneath bridges, like starlings above clouds – points in time, and across landscapes.'
'Notes, Murmurations: The Notebook as Form of Rime' – Lisa Robertson on Samuel Taylor Coleridge's notebooks (& on notebooks, note-taking, a lifetime of reading)
draughtjournal.com/article/note...

Notes, Murmurations: <br>The Notebook as Form of Rime

<p>On 27 November 1799, while taking the night coach from Yorkshire to London, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, after fitful sleep, awoke at sunrise and watch

draughtjournal.com

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Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 1d

“We only live once, and rather badly.”

—Ava, Carole Maso

ya ya yanina @yanina.bsky.social · 1d

We have philosophized badly.

—Joubert

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Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 1d

“There was the cemetery where we met so often. Did you ever wonder what tomb I was visiting?

Yes, but it was like opening a letter sent to someone else.”

There are many kinds of letters.

Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 1d

“Our dead, our poor dead! They ask so little that they get even less.”

The Green Room (1978)

Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 1d

Even though it is often described as the odd one out, this film is very much Truffaut’s. So much so that I always forget it is the adaptation of three Henry James stories: The Altar of the Dead, The Beast in the Jungle, and The Way It Came.

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Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 1d

Rewatching Truffaut’s La chambre verte, I remembered how he once compared this film to a letter written by hand. “If you write by hand it will not be perfect, the writing may perhaps be trembly, but it will be you, your writing.”

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Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 1d

Sunday with Marguerite Duras. “And in our eyes the same sadness, like a night landscape.”

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Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 2d

“Again space is full of voices, the entire body has become heart.”

—Hélène Cixous

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Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 3d

“Although I write about the world of the eternal, please do not get the impression that I have been there myself.”

(found in an old Romanian magazine from the 1930s; author name indecipherable)

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Reposted by Christina Tudor-Sideri

American Literary Translators Association @littranslate.bsky.social · 4d

“Charlotte Mandell had written the English words I was reading, whose power and beauty left me gasping and stunned.”

Bryan Alistair Charles discusses Proust in translation with translator and ALTA member Charlotte Mandell at Lit Hub: @literaryhub.bsky.social

On Translating Proust and the Art of Not Reading Ahead

Le devoir et la tâche d’un écrivain sont ceux d’un traducteur. –Marcel Proust, Le Temps retrouvé * The duty and the task of a writer are those of a translator. –The Past Recaptured, tra…

lithub.com

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Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 3d

For whom does the nothing noth?

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Reposted by Christina Tudor-Sideri

Draught @draughtjournal.bsky.social · 4d

’What would be a reasonable assumption? English to Korean, or Korean to English? Is translation always direction-specific?’
Don Mee Choi on poetry, translation, politics and twinning
draughtjournal.com/article/tran...

Transatlantic Translation Anthology

<p>When I happen to mention to people that I translate contemporary Korean poets, I’m often asked which poets I translate into Korean. Am I to assume

draughtjournal.com

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Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 4d

It feels so long ago... But I still believe that, same as I still believe that writing, any kind of writing, remains a therapy that deepens the wound it soothes.

Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 4d

Coincidentally, or perhaps because of all this rain, I woke up with thoughts of fog and disintegration and the urge to rewatch Damnation, but this fragment from Cărtărescu also reminded me that it has been a while since I have read my favorite from Krasznahorkai, Animalinside.

Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 4d

This reminded of how, for a brief moment in time, when Under the Sign of the Labyrinth was not yet Under the Sign of the Labyrinth, it bore the title Wound Separation.

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Christina Tudor-Sideri @dreamsofbeing.bsky.social · 4d

“We are all strange inside,” writes Cărtărescu in his newest journal. “But only authors know it, for they have seen themselves from within... What I do is describe myself even as the vivisection is taking place, while the scalpel cuts, while the retractor pulls the wound apart.”

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