Clarendon Lecture 4: Messing About in Boats – Solie's 'The World'

Messing About in Boats – Rainer Maria Rilke, Arthur Rimbaud, Eugenio Montale, and Karen Solie

In the 2019 Clarendon Lectures, Professor Michael Hofmann will present close readings of four poems originally written in four different languages (the audience do not need to be proficient in any!), taking the model of a poem as a boat, or a voyage. The lectures aim to restore us to the importance of attending to something outside ourselves, before ourselves, away from ourselves, and to the ideal of cosmopolitanism.

22 January Lecture 1: Rilke's Auswanderer-Schiff or Emigrant Ship

24 January Lecture 2: Rimbaud's Bateau Ivre or Drunken Ship

29 January Lecture 3: Montale's Barche sulla Marna or Boats on the Marne

31 January Lecture 4: Solie's The World