Artist-poet Robert Seydel created many works using the persona of Ruth Greisman, whose emblem was the hare. The following is a constellation of notes and quotations from Seydel’s notebooks (which he called “Knotbooks”) and includes collages and journal pages by Ruth from Book of Ruth and A Picture Is Always a Book. Some of Seydel’s notebooks are currently on display at “Robert Seydel: The Eye in Matter” at Smith College. This blog post is meant to be a kind of virtual vitrine to extend the exhibition online. Any idiosyncrasies of spelling or abbreviation reflect Seydel’s style.
—Claire Cronin
1.
Notebook #44, November 29, 2010
“And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light,
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained”
–Wallace Stevens, “A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts”
2.
Notebook #26, March 19, 2006
Something rolls in me: madness of solitude perhaps. But it opens to a vision of space brighter even than Queens. I sit in the center of it like a rabbit smelling the grass stalks. –RUTH
3.
Untitled [Starry Hare], 2008, from Book of Ruth by Robert Seydel, Siglio, 2011.
4.
Notebook #39, October 12, 2008
“I see the edge of the grey tarmac + every individual blade of grass, I see the hare leaping out of its hiding place, w/ its ears laid back and curiously human expression on its face that was rigid w/ terror + strangely divided; + in its eyes, turning to look back as it fled + almost popping out of its head w/ fright, I see myself, become one w/ it.”
–W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn
5.
Untitled “journal page” from A Picture Is Always a Book: Further Writings from Book of Ruth by Robert Seydel, Siglio, 2014
6.
Notebook #23, March 13, 2005
word: a hare
in a bush. Person
a hare-hunter?
Escape: Animal.
Hare – the human.
–Ruth
7.
Notebook #25, September 18, 2005
march hare – “hare in breeding time, proverbially regarded as an ex. of madness” – Dictionary
march-mad – “excited, rash, w/out self-control”
“mad as a march hare”
“first catch yr hare” – an aphorism: “to the effect that, before disposing of a thing, make sure of yr possession of it”
hare-brained
hare – “v.t. to excite, tease, or worry”
hare – order Lagomorpha, “any of various gnawing mammals”
hare-hearted – “timorous”
hare-lipped
harefoot – “figuratively, a swift-footed person”
8.
Untitled “journal page” from A Picture Is Always a Book: Further Writings from Book of Ruth by Robert Seydel, Siglio, 2014
9.
Notebook #25, October 13, 2005
“The rabbit hops alternatively btween field + kitchen garden + is both cuddly + demonic. It bears a streak of lunacy that almost seems to signify its schizophrenia. Its notorious reproductivity, promiscuity, + harebrained behavior are keyed to the moon + the seasons. It was formerly called a ‘coney,’ from cuniculus, from which also comes ‘cunt,’ + the Playboy bunny is at least as old as the eighteenth-century ‘cunny house.’ For centuries rabbit skin was made into underwear. When tabooed animals can be so closely associated w/ such heavily stressed areas as the body openings, the interdictions relating it to language are greatly intensified.”
– Paul Shepard, Thinking Animals
10.
Notebook #25, September 6, 2005
“For me the hare is the symbol of incarnation. The hare does in reality what man can only do mentally: he digs himself in, he digs a construction. He incarnates himself in the earth.”
– Joseph Beuys, Actions, Vitrines, Environments
11.
Untitled “journal page” from A Picture Is Always a Book: Further Writings from Book of Ruth by Robert Seydel, Siglio, 2014
12.
Notebook #44, December 2, 2009
“These are words + their words holler hollowly in the rabbit burrows, in the metaphors, in the years of our life.”
– Jack Spicer, “A Textbook of Poetry”
13.
Notebook #43, September 30, 2009
Great fish,
rabbits
Paradise
is in them
as it’s not in me
14.
“Saul & Me & Hare,” 2007, from Book of Ruth by Robert Seydel, Siglio, 2011.