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The Clayton Eshleman translation of Aimé Césaire finally came in at the library, and inlandsea brought it home to me. Eshelman is another of the genuinely great poetic translators, and Césaire, o.

I found the book accidentally. I was browsing the poetry section at Central. There was something I couldn't find, and something else that wasn't as good as I was hoping, and there was a Don Domanski, Stations of the Left Hand, which is good in its own right. Then there was this big white book translated by Eshleman, whose own work I have been trying to find (frustration so far) -- and it was one of those books that you open and know immediately that this is more than greatness. I've been waiting impatiently for it to arrive ever since.

Now I see that Césaire has just died.

Q: If you found the book at Central, why put a hold on it and make them drag it all the way out to Nellie McClung?

A: It's a large-format hardcover, and I feared injury. inlandsea assured me that it was acceptable to misuse the system in this case. She said lots of people do it.

Yesterday, lying down in virtuous attempt to promote healing -- having slightly reinjured myself in lifting a small (but not small enough) child at Linabeet's Healthy Herbal Garden Party -- I started to re-read 84, Charing Cross Road, and had to get up and immediately go out to a bookstore. There were only four minutes until closing, so I glanced, saw nothing compelling and only one possible, and left. Went back today before studying. Told myself I had to keep to $20. Very nearly obeyed. No sensible reason to buy books, especially now in the midst of studying. Nevertheless, here they are (heavy on the CanLit):

The Great Victorian Collection - Brian Moore (Great potential to be an Oddity)
The Diary of a Nobody - George & Weedon Grossmith (Orange-era Penguin)
The Portable Coleridge (Had to compare two different Coleridges -- this was a dollar more, but much more complete - though really just needed "Christabel")
The Blazing World & Other Writings - Margaret Cavendish (Yellow-era Penguin Classics) (17th-C female writer)
The Black Book - Lawrence Durrell (Cover: Nice obsessive-looking white line drawing on black background, street scene) (I am not a Durrell fan in general, but this is his first book and the voice quite different)
Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada - Anna Brownell Jameson (New Canadian Library - ugly cover, interesting text - Moodie but not so Moodie)

I tested the prose of all in several places (& the poetry of C.) and though they were all very different, they were all engaging and didn't pall -- Jameson was fresh, Durrell was lavishly surreal, Cavendish was remarkably lucid, the Grossmiths made me laugh, and the Moore had an engaging opening and might be dirty.

I left behind a lovely old Penguin patterncover of Hardy's poetry because I don't really love Hardy's poetry -- I'd just be buying it for the cover -- and a 39 Steps, ditto, and a volume of M.R. James' ghost stories just because I had to put something back. Which makes me fear I am not a real Gothic aspirant.

Otherwise: studying, but not enough. Being sore. Sleeping in too late. Exam tomorrow. & so on.

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