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I began to imagine this piece while I was reading Franz Kafka’s short story The Bucket Rider: “Coal all spent; the bucket empty; the shovel useless; the stove breathing out cold; the room freezing…”
The narrator is desperate to survive the winter and must beg the coal dealer to give him just a shovelful of coal. How does he get to the coal dealer’s cellar? He rides his bucket, and floats high above the coal dealer sitting at his table. But the coal dealer’s wife takes over and waves her apron, wafting the narrator away as he shouts insults at her. “And with that I ascend into the regions of the ice mountains and am lost forever.”
To the Ice Mountains was commissioned by Earplay.
QUADRANGLE OF LIGHT for violin, viola, cello, and piano (2021) by Hyo-shin Na was inspired by a part of a series of Charles Reznikoff’s long poem “By the Well of Living and Seeing”.
By the Well of Living and Seeing, Part II, Section 33
by Charles Reznikoff
It was after midnight before I got into bed
and then I found that I could not sleep
and kept thinking about the vexations of the day.
It seemed to me an excellent idea
to get up and take a long walk through the quiet streets
but I was too tired to leave my bed:
even dressing again seemed too much.
As I kept turning my head restlessly
I caught sight of the garage in the yard:
the roof covered with a smooth level of snow.
From where I lay I could not see the moon
nor the yard itself
but the garage roof was shining like a quadrangle of light
against the darkness:
a quadrangle of night
against the darkness
Looking at it I forgot myself
and fell into a deep and untroubled sleep.
