Frank Beck
@diehoren.bsky.social
I am a writer and translator. My most recent project is 'Anneliese's House' by Lou Andreas-Salomé, which I translated with Raleigh Whitinger. The profile image is from the wallpaper in William Morris's drawing room. My website is www.diehoren.com.
Translators have brought most of Rilke into English but have largely ignored his 1912 sequence 'The Life of Mary'. (Stephen Spender published a translation in 1951.).
Here's one of my favorite poems from the collection, with a little of its backstory.
translations.diehoren.com/2019/12/a-ch...
Here's one of my favorite poems from the collection, with a little of its backstory.
translations.diehoren.com/2019/12/a-ch...
November 28, 2025 at 3:40 AM
Translators have brought most of Rilke into English but have largely ignored his 1912 sequence 'The Life of Mary'. (Stephen Spender published a translation in 1951.).
Here's one of my favorite poems from the collection, with a little of its backstory.
translations.diehoren.com/2019/12/a-ch...
Here's one of my favorite poems from the collection, with a little of its backstory.
translations.diehoren.com/2019/12/a-ch...
My dear friend Valerie Andrews has published the final edition of her digital magazine, Reinventing Home. As always, it's full of images and ideas that prompt us to consider what we have in mind when we set up a new home -- or yearn to return to a past one:
reinventinghome.org/home-is-wher...
reinventinghome.org/home-is-wher...
November 27, 2025 at 4:33 PM
My dear friend Valerie Andrews has published the final edition of her digital magazine, Reinventing Home. As always, it's full of images and ideas that prompt us to consider what we have in mind when we set up a new home -- or yearn to return to a past one:
reinventinghome.org/home-is-wher...
reinventinghome.org/home-is-wher...
The latest from Classiques Garnier, the leading publisher of literary criticism in France:
r.publications.classiques-garnier.com/mk/mr/sh/WCP...
r.publications.classiques-garnier.com/mk/mr/sh/WCP...
November 27, 2025 at 3:45 PM
The latest from Classiques Garnier, the leading publisher of literary criticism in France:
r.publications.classiques-garnier.com/mk/mr/sh/WCP...
r.publications.classiques-garnier.com/mk/mr/sh/WCP...
New from France: 'You should steal yourself a life': a collection of letters from Lou Andreas-Salomé to Nietzsche, Rilke, Freud, and others, translated by Charlotte Grenier. Details here:
www.editionslorma.fr/livre/979125...
www.editionslorma.fr/livre/979125...
November 26, 2025 at 2:06 AM
New from France: 'You should steal yourself a life': a collection of letters from Lou Andreas-Salomé to Nietzsche, Rilke, Freud, and others, translated by Charlotte Grenier. Details here:
www.editionslorma.fr/livre/979125...
www.editionslorma.fr/livre/979125...
A part of Belle Epoque life I'd never heard about: the two women who created a home in Paris for young Americans seeking escape from the confines of US life and a chance to study art:
reinventinghome.org/they-always-...
reinventinghome.org/they-always-...
November 25, 2025 at 12:34 PM
A part of Belle Epoque life I'd never heard about: the two women who created a home in Paris for young Americans seeking escape from the confines of US life and a chance to study art:
reinventinghome.org/they-always-...
reinventinghome.org/they-always-...
Happy Birthday, Robin Williamson. How many hours of delight his songs have brought us!
'The great ship, the ship of the world, long time sailing:
mariners, mariners, gather your skills!
Jesus and Hitler and Richard, the Lion Heart;
Three Kings and Moses and Queen Cleopatra . . .
'The great ship, the ship of the world, long time sailing:
mariners, mariners, gather your skills!
Jesus and Hitler and Richard, the Lion Heart;
Three Kings and Moses and Queen Cleopatra . . .
November 24, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Happy Birthday, Robin Williamson. How many hours of delight his songs have brought us!
'The great ship, the ship of the world, long time sailing:
mariners, mariners, gather your skills!
Jesus and Hitler and Richard, the Lion Heart;
Three Kings and Moses and Queen Cleopatra . . .
'The great ship, the ship of the world, long time sailing:
mariners, mariners, gather your skills!
Jesus and Hitler and Richard, the Lion Heart;
Three Kings and Moses and Queen Cleopatra . . .
The spirit of David Caspar Friedrich, breathing a gentle peacefulness, seemed to pass over the suburban town of Nutley, New Jersey as I went in for dinner last night.
November 24, 2025 at 2:43 PM
The spirit of David Caspar Friedrich, breathing a gentle peacefulness, seemed to pass over the suburban town of Nutley, New Jersey as I went in for dinner last night.
'Winter Evening at Söder, Stockholm' (1889) by Georg Pauli (1855-1935). In the collection of the Gothenburg Museum of Art.
November 24, 2025 at 3:42 AM
'Winter Evening at Söder, Stockholm' (1889) by Georg Pauli (1855-1935). In the collection of the Gothenburg Museum of Art.
One of my favorite Christmas poems -- by Theodor Fontane, the author of 'Effi Briest':
For the 24th of December 1890
Once again, a Christmas dinner.
As before, our ranks are thinner;
Yet I will choose to take it so,
With all the highs and all the lows . . .
For the 24th of December 1890
Once again, a Christmas dinner.
As before, our ranks are thinner;
Yet I will choose to take it so,
With all the highs and all the lows . . .
November 24, 2025 at 1:49 AM
One of my favorite Christmas poems -- by Theodor Fontane, the author of 'Effi Briest':
For the 24th of December 1890
Once again, a Christmas dinner.
As before, our ranks are thinner;
Yet I will choose to take it so,
With all the highs and all the lows . . .
For the 24th of December 1890
Once again, a Christmas dinner.
As before, our ranks are thinner;
Yet I will choose to take it so,
With all the highs and all the lows . . .
'Oh, how many spectacles I have missed.
The curtains all went up without me, and
they fell the same way. And how many friends
there might have been that life never brought me . . .
The curtains all went up without me, and
they fell the same way. And how many friends
there might have been that life never brought me . . .
November 21, 2025 at 2:58 PM
'Oh, how many spectacles I have missed.
The curtains all went up without me, and
they fell the same way. And how many friends
there might have been that life never brought me . . .
The curtains all went up without me, and
they fell the same way. And how many friends
there might have been that life never brought me . . .
Marcel Proust died on this date in 1922, at the age of 51, still revising the last three volumes of 'In Search of Lost Time'; they were published over the course of the next five years. Here's a video visit to Proust's childhood home in Illiers-Combray:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0t...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0t...
November 18, 2025 at 7:34 PM
Marcel Proust died on this date in 1922, at the age of 51, still revising the last three volumes of 'In Search of Lost Time'; they were published over the course of the next five years. Here's a video visit to Proust's childhood home in Illiers-Combray:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0t...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0t...
What is it in sleep that I don’t want to find?
What’s in this dark room that I can’t leave behind?
Let the rain, oh the rain, let the rain fall down;
the breathing of sleepers is a sorrowful sound . . .
From 'Charm against sleeplessness'
The full poem is in Comments.
What’s in this dark room that I can’t leave behind?
Let the rain, oh the rain, let the rain fall down;
the breathing of sleepers is a sorrowful sound . . .
From 'Charm against sleeplessness'
The full poem is in Comments.
November 16, 2025 at 7:28 PM
What is it in sleep that I don’t want to find?
What’s in this dark room that I can’t leave behind?
Let the rain, oh the rain, let the rain fall down;
the breathing of sleepers is a sorrowful sound . . .
From 'Charm against sleeplessness'
The full poem is in Comments.
What’s in this dark room that I can’t leave behind?
Let the rain, oh the rain, let the rain fall down;
the breathing of sleepers is a sorrowful sound . . .
From 'Charm against sleeplessness'
The full poem is in Comments.
If you have two minutes, Leif Ove Andsnes would like to introduce you to an overlooked gem in the world's piano repertory:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2HU...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2HU...
November 16, 2025 at 4:21 PM
If you have two minutes, Leif Ove Andsnes would like to introduce you to an overlooked gem in the world's piano repertory:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2HU...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2HU...
Any thoughts on Raul Ruiz's 1999 film, based on 'Time Regained', the seventh and final volume of Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time'? (Yes, that's Emmanuelle Béart as Gilberte.)
For those who don't know it, here's the trailer:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7SD...
For those who don't know it, here's the trailer:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7SD...
November 15, 2025 at 7:14 PM
Any thoughts on Raul Ruiz's 1999 film, based on 'Time Regained', the seventh and final volume of Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time'? (Yes, that's Emmanuelle Béart as Gilberte.)
For those who don't know it, here's the trailer:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7SD...
For those who don't know it, here's the trailer:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7SD...
If you haven't liked the Proust you've seen in English so far, you might try Charlotte Mandel's translation of 'In the Shadow of Girls in Blossom' (Oxford World Classics) -- the second volume of 'In Search of Lost Time'. No English writer has captured Proust's tone and diction so well.
November 14, 2025 at 12:42 AM
If you haven't liked the Proust you've seen in English so far, you might try Charlotte Mandel's translation of 'In the Shadow of Girls in Blossom' (Oxford World Classics) -- the second volume of 'In Search of Lost Time'. No English writer has captured Proust's tone and diction so well.
'Your turning down a story doesn't make it any worse, any more than your taking it makes it better; so the effort, to please and challenge myself, remains the same.'
John Updike, in a letter to his New Yorker editor, Roger Angel
More on Updike's selected letters in Comments.
John Updike, in a letter to his New Yorker editor, Roger Angel
More on Updike's selected letters in Comments.
November 8, 2025 at 3:13 PM
'Your turning down a story doesn't make it any worse, any more than your taking it makes it better; so the effort, to please and challenge myself, remains the same.'
John Updike, in a letter to his New Yorker editor, Roger Angel
More on Updike's selected letters in Comments.
John Updike, in a letter to his New Yorker editor, Roger Angel
More on Updike's selected letters in Comments.
One of my favorite passages from Charlotte Mandel's new translation of volume two of Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time' (p. 387.) Details about the book in Comments.
November 7, 2025 at 4:28 PM
One of my favorite passages from Charlotte Mandel's new translation of volume two of Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time' (p. 387.) Details about the book in Comments.
In a new monograph from Classiques Garnier, Arthur Morisseau looks at the fictional and real composers connected with the character Vinteuil in Proust's 'In search of lost time'. Morisseau will discuss writers and their composers in Paris on November 15.
More at the link in Comments.
More at the link in Comments.
November 6, 2025 at 6:21 PM
In a new monograph from Classiques Garnier, Arthur Morisseau looks at the fictional and real composers connected with the character Vinteuil in Proust's 'In search of lost time'. Morisseau will discuss writers and their composers in Paris on November 15.
More at the link in Comments.
More at the link in Comments.
Sometimes, watching a sunset, we can feel as though we've seen those clouds many, many years ago. Sometimes they are most than passing vapors; they seem like old friends.
November 5, 2025 at 10:10 PM
Sometimes, watching a sunset, we can feel as though we've seen those clouds many, many years ago. Sometimes they are most than passing vapors; they seem like old friends.
Thought for the day, November 5, 2025:
November 5, 2025 at 4:28 PM
Thought for the day, November 5, 2025:
Paul Celan translated many of his poems from German into French for his wife Gisèle Lestrange. Two new books give us English versions of those translations, opening new perspectives on his work. I reviewed both of them for American Book Review, available from Project Muse.
November 5, 2025 at 2:16 PM
Paul Celan translated many of his poems from German into French for his wife Gisèle Lestrange. Two new books give us English versions of those translations, opening new perspectives on his work. I reviewed both of them for American Book Review, available from Project Muse.
Poet Anne Carson calls this meditation of hers on one of Proust's most memorable characters "The Albetine Workout". (Catherine Tillette played her in the 2011 French miniseries based on 'In search of lost time.')
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...
November 4, 2025 at 8:03 PM
Poet Anne Carson calls this meditation of hers on one of Proust's most memorable characters "The Albetine Workout". (Catherine Tillette played her in the 2011 French miniseries based on 'In search of lost time.')
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v3...
My apologies: that's the wrong photo. Here is a photograph of Anatole France. (The one above is of Emile Zola.)
November 4, 2025 at 2:09 PM
My apologies: that's the wrong photo. Here is a photograph of Anatole France. (The one above is of Emile Zola.)
'The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets, and stealing loaves of bread.'
Anatole France, 'The Red Lily' (1894)
France was the model for the writer Bergotte in Proust's 'In search of lost time'. (France in his Paris office.)
Anatole France, 'The Red Lily' (1894)
France was the model for the writer Bergotte in Proust's 'In search of lost time'. (France in his Paris office.)
November 1, 2025 at 8:28 PM
'The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets, and stealing loaves of bread.'
Anatole France, 'The Red Lily' (1894)
France was the model for the writer Bergotte in Proust's 'In search of lost time'. (France in his Paris office.)
Anatole France, 'The Red Lily' (1894)
France was the model for the writer Bergotte in Proust's 'In search of lost time'. (France in his Paris office.)
Hai visto questo video di Pasolini che legge parte del Canto 81 in italiano, con Pound che ascolta?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aevn...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aevn...
October 31, 2025 at 12:43 AM
Hai visto questo video di Pasolini che legge parte del Canto 81 in italiano, con Pound che ascolta?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aevn...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aevn...