Good Morning
What is my duty?
What each day requires.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Goethe either said something like this, or he should have.
I have a busy day today.
And you?
posted by greg rappleye at 6:23 AM
Monday, May 07, 2007
What is my duty?
What each day requires.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Goethe either said something like this, or he should have.
I have a busy day today.
And you?
About Me
- Name: greg rappleye
- Location: Grand Haven, Michigan, United States
I am a writer who lives and works in West Michigan. I am a graduate of Albion College, the University of Michigan Law School, and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. I have published three full-length collections of poetry: Holding Down the Earth (Sky Books, 1995), A Path Between Houses (University of Wisconsin Press, 2000) which won the Brittingham Prize, and Figured Dark (University of Arkansas Press, 2007), which won the University of Arkansas Press Poetry Series. I have also published three chapbooks: Eros, Psyche and the Death of Narrative (Candle Creek Press, 2006), The Afterlight (WVU-Legal Studies Forum, 2006), and The Divisible Field ( WVU-Legal Studies Forum, 2008), and have completed a fourth manuscript, Tropical Landscape with Ten Hummingbirds. I am working on a novel. My work has received a Pushcart Prize, the Mississippi Review Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Prize, the Greensboro Review Literary Award in Poetry, and the Arts & Letters Prize. I was a Bread Loaf Fellow in 2002. When not writing, I work full-time as corporation counsel for a local government and also teach part-time in the English Department at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
Previous Posts
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- Dan Gerber on Poetry Daily
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- Almost Random Notes, Part 11
- Good News from Jack Ridl: Co-Winner of the Society...
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3 Comments:
A busy day, with a headache.
C. Dale Young likes to cite a great thing Donald Justice said to him once: "We always find the time to do the things we want to do."
I don't think JWvG said that, by the way. I think it was GR. :-)
Andrew:
I took the line from a poem by Raymond Carver, who quotes Goethe to that effect. Everything is such a mess here, I can't find the Carver volume.
But I think you're right; Goethe never said exactly what I (or rather, Carver) attributed to him. The closest I can find from Goethe is in the poem "Lebensregal" (or "Precept") which, in my Penguin Classics Selected Verse, translates (in part) as: "you must ask: what does each day demand? and what each day demands, it will tell you... "
The Penguin translation is rendered in prose, and how accurate it is, I cannot say.
All the best,
Greg Rappleye
Does your edition have the German? I found a poem called "Lebensregel" but it does not have the lines you quote.
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