“The Rabbits are in the Stars”Following the Hare in Robert Seydel’s Notebooks

affinities, 09/10/14

Selected and arranged by Claire Cronin

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. —CC

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.

Detail, 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.

see also


✼ natalie’s upstate weather report:

April 11, 2024 — The spring peepers have thawed (these little frogs freeze in winter) and now, unabashedly randy, they chirp. At first there was one, then two, and now it sounds like thousands. Two days ago, when it was truly spring, their adamantine chorus was almost deafening (we closed the windows to simply think!). Siglio has relocated to a lush, thriving hollow at the furthest most edge of the Berkshires after two years of peripatetics, sans library—which is now unpacked in a less than Benjaminian manner (little time to contemplate—our urgency in getting books on shelves mirrored the peepers need to mate). The first few months of 2024 were almost unendurable, but we’re home, spring is here, and there are books to made. We are singing!

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