Yoon Kim
@yoonkim.bsky.social
🌸 Und es floooorte um mich herum und ich schüüüttelte einen Liebling. (Mayröcker)
Been looping in my head 🌸
Been looping in my head 🌸
“...and once I had read it, I began to reread it from the beginning again, and it floraed all around me and I shook myself a beloved...”
(Mayröcker, tr. Alexander Booth)
(Mayröcker, tr. Alexander Booth)
February 18, 2026 at 10:29 PM
🌸 Und es floooorte um mich herum und ich schüüüttelte einen Liebling. (Mayröcker)
Been looping in my head 🌸
Been looping in my head 🌸
“...and once I had read it, I began to reread it from the beginning again, and it floraed all around me and I shook myself a beloved...”
(Mayröcker, tr. Alexander Booth)
(Mayröcker, tr. Alexander Booth)
February 18, 2026 at 8:07 PM
“...and once I had read it, I began to reread it from the beginning again, and it floraed all around me and I shook myself a beloved...”
(Mayröcker, tr. Alexander Booth)
(Mayröcker, tr. Alexander Booth)
Mayröcker:
“I start off the day by attempting to verbalize the smallest performances, every movement, this is 1 writing behind the writing, I say, everything dissolves into language...”
(The Communicating Vessels, tr. Alexander Booth)
“I start off the day by attempting to verbalize the smallest performances, every movement, this is 1 writing behind the writing, I say, everything dissolves into language...”
(The Communicating Vessels, tr. Alexander Booth)
February 18, 2026 at 6:04 PM
Mayröcker:
“I start off the day by attempting to verbalize the smallest performances, every movement, this is 1 writing behind the writing, I say, everything dissolves into language...”
(The Communicating Vessels, tr. Alexander Booth)
“I start off the day by attempting to verbalize the smallest performances, every movement, this is 1 writing behind the writing, I say, everything dissolves into language...”
(The Communicating Vessels, tr. Alexander Booth)
“The thinking force gathers in a word like light clouds appearing in a serene sky.”
— Wilhelm von Humboldt
(quoted in Waldrop, Dissonance)
— Wilhelm von Humboldt
(quoted in Waldrop, Dissonance)
February 18, 2026 at 5:57 PM
“The thinking force gathers in a word like light clouds appearing in a serene sky.”
— Wilhelm von Humboldt
(quoted in Waldrop, Dissonance)
— Wilhelm von Humboldt
(quoted in Waldrop, Dissonance)
“The mind has no edge, but the folds of the brain afford both the maximum surface for touch and the possibility to fall between them inexorably like the sequence of seasons.”
— Friederike Mayröcker
(quoted in Waldrop, Dissonance)
— Friederike Mayröcker
(quoted in Waldrop, Dissonance)
February 18, 2026 at 5:55 PM
“The mind has no edge, but the folds of the brain afford both the maximum surface for touch and the possibility to fall between them inexorably like the sequence of seasons.”
— Friederike Mayröcker
(quoted in Waldrop, Dissonance)
— Friederike Mayröcker
(quoted in Waldrop, Dissonance)
Reposted by Yoon Kim
Spent a birthday Eason voucher on my Gerald Murnane library. Took me a few books to *get* him but we're all good now.
Last Letter to a Reader and Collected Short Fiction in the attractive And Other Stories covers, and then Landscape Within Landscape in the ugly cover that looks like a proof.
Last Letter to a Reader and Collected Short Fiction in the attractive And Other Stories covers, and then Landscape Within Landscape in the ugly cover that looks like a proof.
February 17, 2026 at 9:07 PM
Spent a birthday Eason voucher on my Gerald Murnane library. Took me a few books to *get* him but we're all good now.
Last Letter to a Reader and Collected Short Fiction in the attractive And Other Stories covers, and then Landscape Within Landscape in the ugly cover that looks like a proof.
Last Letter to a Reader and Collected Short Fiction in the attractive And Other Stories covers, and then Landscape Within Landscape in the ugly cover that looks like a proof.
Reposted by Yoon Kim
That's cute: there's a book of letters to the editor by, and about, Thomas Bernhard
January 21, 2026 at 6:23 PM
That's cute: there's a book of letters to the editor by, and about, Thomas Bernhard
Reposted by Yoon Kim
Just arrived in the post. Translated by @shirtysleeves.bsky.social I doubt there is more of Bernhard left to translate.
January 23, 2026 at 1:50 PM
Just arrived in the post. Translated by @shirtysleeves.bsky.social I doubt there is more of Bernhard left to translate.
Reposted by Yoon Kim
Of Seven Fir Trees and the Snow, a collection of my translations of Thomas Bernhard's early short stories published by Seagull Books, is now in bookstores and available at Amazon.
a.co/d/0b9yZfcu
a.co/d/0b9yZfcu
Amazon.com
a.co
February 17, 2026 at 1:39 AM
Of Seven Fir Trees and the Snow, a collection of my translations of Thomas Bernhard's early short stories published by Seagull Books, is now in bookstores and available at Amazon.
a.co/d/0b9yZfcu
a.co/d/0b9yZfcu
“Listen, I never meant for you not to be in my house. But you couldn’t because you were it.”
— John Ashbery, from “Valentine”
— John Ashbery, from “Valentine”
February 17, 2026 at 8:15 PM
“Listen, I never meant for you not to be in my house. But you couldn’t because you were it.”
— John Ashbery, from “Valentine”
— John Ashbery, from “Valentine”
“And isn’t the mind a little like the air? However immense the space is that you open in front of it, it fills it.”
— Marcel Proust
from “Jacques Lefelde (The Stranger),” in The Mysterious Correspondent, trans. @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social
— Marcel Proust
from “Jacques Lefelde (The Stranger),” in The Mysterious Correspondent, trans. @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social
February 16, 2026 at 8:30 PM
“And isn’t the mind a little like the air? However immense the space is that you open in front of it, it fills it.”
— Marcel Proust
from “Jacques Lefelde (The Stranger),” in The Mysterious Correspondent, trans. @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social
— Marcel Proust
from “Jacques Lefelde (The Stranger),” in The Mysterious Correspondent, trans. @avecsesdoigts.bsky.social
Reposted by Yoon Kim
Missing the ocean 💙
February 15, 2026 at 11:58 PM
Missing the ocean 💙
. . . The mind
Is so hospitable, taking in everything
Like boarders, and you don’t see until
It’s all over how little there was to learn
Once the stench of knowledge has dissipated, and the trouvailles
Of every one of the senses fallen back.
— John Ashbery, “Houseboat Days”
Is so hospitable, taking in everything
Like boarders, and you don’t see until
It’s all over how little there was to learn
Once the stench of knowledge has dissipated, and the trouvailles
Of every one of the senses fallen back.
— John Ashbery, “Houseboat Days”
February 16, 2026 at 7:40 PM
. . . The mind
Is so hospitable, taking in everything
Like boarders, and you don’t see until
It’s all over how little there was to learn
Once the stench of knowledge has dissipated, and the trouvailles
Of every one of the senses fallen back.
— John Ashbery, “Houseboat Days”
Is so hospitable, taking in everything
Like boarders, and you don’t see until
It’s all over how little there was to learn
Once the stench of knowledge has dissipated, and the trouvailles
Of every one of the senses fallen back.
— John Ashbery, “Houseboat Days”
February 16, 2026 at 5:27 PM
Roland Barthes:
“Were I a writer, and dead, how I would love it if my life … were to reduce itself to a few details, a few preferences, a few inflections, let us say: to ‘biographemes’ whose distinction and mobility might go beyond any fate and come to touch … some future body.”
“Were I a writer, and dead, how I would love it if my life … were to reduce itself to a few details, a few preferences, a few inflections, let us say: to ‘biographemes’ whose distinction and mobility might go beyond any fate and come to touch … some future body.”
February 16, 2026 at 5:17 PM
Roland Barthes:
“Were I a writer, and dead, how I would love it if my life … were to reduce itself to a few details, a few preferences, a few inflections, let us say: to ‘biographemes’ whose distinction and mobility might go beyond any fate and come to touch … some future body.”
“Were I a writer, and dead, how I would love it if my life … were to reduce itself to a few details, a few preferences, a few inflections, let us say: to ‘biographemes’ whose distinction and mobility might go beyond any fate and come to touch … some future body.”
“The wish to have a soul and to be this selfsame soul uniquely through eternity must pale, remarkably, before the soul’s desire to have a body and a lifetime. The soul would gladly give its kingdom for a horse. Or perhaps a donkey?”
— Paul Valéry (Analects, tr. Gilbert)
— Paul Valéry (Analects, tr. Gilbert)
February 16, 2026 at 4:47 PM
“The wish to have a soul and to be this selfsame soul uniquely through eternity must pale, remarkably, before the soul’s desire to have a body and a lifetime. The soul would gladly give its kingdom for a horse. Or perhaps a donkey?”
— Paul Valéry (Analects, tr. Gilbert)
— Paul Valéry (Analects, tr. Gilbert)
Reminds me of Proust:
“It is in sickness that we are compelled to recognise that we do not live alone but are chained to a being from a different realm, from whom we are worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. [+]
“It is in sickness that we are compelled to recognise that we do not live alone but are chained to a being from a different realm, from whom we are worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. [+]
February 16, 2026 at 4:37 PM
Reminds me of Proust:
“It is in sickness that we are compelled to recognise that we do not live alone but are chained to a being from a different realm, from whom we are worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. [+]
“It is in sickness that we are compelled to recognise that we do not live alone but are chained to a being from a different realm, from whom we are worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. [+]
“[…] if the body had been easier to understand, nobody would have thought that we had a mind.”
— Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
— Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
February 16, 2026 at 4:29 PM
“[…] if the body had been easier to understand, nobody would have thought that we had a mind.”
— Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
— Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
When I learned to read and write, I devoured books, and I thought that they were like trees, like animals, something that is born. I didn’t know there was an author behind it all. Eventually, I discovered that that’s how it was, and I said, “I want that, too.”
— Clarice Lispector (interview, 1976)
— Clarice Lispector (interview, 1976)
February 15, 2026 at 8:48 PM
When I learned to read and write, I devoured books, and I thought that they were like trees, like animals, something that is born. I didn’t know there was an author behind it all. Eventually, I discovered that that’s how it was, and I said, “I want that, too.”
— Clarice Lispector (interview, 1976)
— Clarice Lispector (interview, 1976)
“I shall read a passage of Shakspeare every Sunday at ten o Clock—you read one at the same time and we shall be as near each other as blind bodies can be in the same room.”
— John Keats in a letter (1818)
— John Keats in a letter (1818)
February 15, 2026 at 7:10 PM
“I shall read a passage of Shakspeare every Sunday at ten o Clock—you read one at the same time and we shall be as near each other as blind bodies can be in the same room.”
— John Keats in a letter (1818)
— John Keats in a letter (1818)
“Life forms a surface that acts as if it could not be otherwise, but under its skin things are pounding and pulsing.”
(Musil, The Man without Qualities)
(Musil, The Man without Qualities)
February 15, 2026 at 6:20 PM
“Life forms a surface that acts as if it could not be otherwise, but under its skin things are pounding and pulsing.”
(Musil, The Man without Qualities)
(Musil, The Man without Qualities)
“Das Leben bildet eine Oberfläche, die so tut, als ob sie so sein müßte, wie sie ist, aber unter ihrer Haut treiben und drängen die Dinge.”
— Robert Musil, MoE
— Robert Musil, MoE
February 15, 2026 at 6:18 PM
“Das Leben bildet eine Oberfläche, die so tut, als ob sie so sein müßte, wie sie ist, aber unter ihrer Haut treiben und drängen die Dinge.”
— Robert Musil, MoE
— Robert Musil, MoE
“And the proof is that we cannot even imagine another way of being. We are stuck here for eternity and we are not even aware that we are stuck…
We were surprised once, long ago; and now we can never be surprised again.”
— John Ashbery, “The Recital”
We were surprised once, long ago; and now we can never be surprised again.”
— John Ashbery, “The Recital”
February 15, 2026 at 6:17 PM
“And the proof is that we cannot even imagine another way of being. We are stuck here for eternity and we are not even aware that we are stuck…
We were surprised once, long ago; and now we can never be surprised again.”
— John Ashbery, “The Recital”
We were surprised once, long ago; and now we can never be surprised again.”
— John Ashbery, “The Recital”
“But from time to time. From time to time. What tenderness in these little words, what savagery.”
(Beckett, Molloy)
(Beckett, Molloy)
February 14, 2026 at 6:23 PM
“But from time to time. From time to time. What tenderness in these little words, what savagery.”
(Beckett, Molloy)
(Beckett, Molloy)
“Mais de temps en temps. De temps en temps. Quelle bonté dans ces petits mots, quelle férocité.”
(Beckett, Molloy)
(Beckett, Molloy)
February 14, 2026 at 6:22 PM
“Mais de temps en temps. De temps en temps. Quelle bonté dans ces petits mots, quelle férocité.”
(Beckett, Molloy)
(Beckett, Molloy)