SEIZE THE DAY
I saw this old Robin Williams movie two nights ago. It was called "Seize the day". It was not a great movie but Robin Williams is a great actor. The basic story is this nice mild-mannered New York Jewish guy gets screwed by his wife and his father and his friends and everybody he trusts and finally he is so miserable that he goes to a funeral and breaks down and cries in the synagohue. Two old ladies are watching and talking about how close he must have been to the deceased because he is so upset, but the real reason he is crying is that life is miserable. Or at least, his life is miserable.
I would not recommend this movie as it is not very uplifting but robin Williams did a great job of playing an insecure chain-smoking guy in a cutthroat world. At the end of the movie I read the credits and i was interested to note that it was baes on a book by Saul Bellow. I have never read any of his books but I have a few and I am glad I did not read that one.
The following day (Thursday) I was going to work and reading this Rilke biography and I came across this translation of a couple of lines of his poetry that he put in the Book of Hours. He was writing about how he had longed for inspiration so he could write poetry because poetry was what he lived for but sometimes he joked that he should have been a postman, because inspiration took so long to come. Then it did come and he wrote.....
And now the hour inclines and it touches my heart
with its clear and metallic ring
My senses are shaking; I feel I can start
seizing the pliable day as a thing.
I wonder, did Saul Bellow get the title of his novel from that phrase in Rilke's poem?
I would not recommend this movie as it is not very uplifting but robin Williams did a great job of playing an insecure chain-smoking guy in a cutthroat world. At the end of the movie I read the credits and i was interested to note that it was baes on a book by Saul Bellow. I have never read any of his books but I have a few and I am glad I did not read that one.
The following day (Thursday) I was going to work and reading this Rilke biography and I came across this translation of a couple of lines of his poetry that he put in the Book of Hours. He was writing about how he had longed for inspiration so he could write poetry because poetry was what he lived for but sometimes he joked that he should have been a postman, because inspiration took so long to come. Then it did come and he wrote.....
And now the hour inclines and it touches my heart
with its clear and metallic ring
My senses are shaking; I feel I can start
seizing the pliable day as a thing.
I wonder, did Saul Bellow get the title of his novel from that phrase in Rilke's poem?