solaris

I finished solaris in record time. Swiping my finger across my ipad for hours on end, i was disappointed when there was no more to read. I feel like lem could of tripled the books length, forever evolving and describing the world of solaris and the weird, vivid details he uses. The link or rios blong to solarpedia provides to stunning visuals of solaris. I was also a tad confused when i began to read the book. I remember hearing the characters name, Rheya and Snow. After a couple hours reading, I wondered when I was going to be introduced to these characters. I finally realized my translation left the charters with their original polish names names. So Rheya becomes Harry, and Snow becomes Snaut. I'm always fascinated curious when I read a book that was originally written in a foreign language. I can't help but wonder how much meaning is lost in the translation. I wonder about word choice; there were more then a few unique words in Solaris. Does surreptitiously or somnambulistic translate directly from polish? Or was it up to the translators discretion?

Jenny did a fantastic job at connecting certain phrases and sentences to Stevens poetry. I can only hope to produce a few that are as well connected and thought out:

Here are a few passages i found relative to Stevens poetry. I would include page numbers, but its an ebook and they won't correspond with the print version.

"This was simply untrue, because the living ocean certainly does act-it's just that it does so according to notions other than those of humans, it doesn't build cities."

"It occurred to me that I could take some powerful medication, like peyote for example, or something else that produces hallucinations or graphic visions. Experiencing such things would prove that what I had taken really exited and was a part of the material reality surrounding me. But, I thought further, that too would not be the critical experiment I was after, because I knew how the substance (which I of course would have to select) ought to act on me, and so it could also be the case that both taking of the medication and the effects it caused were equally products of my imagination."

"One world is enough, even there we feel stifled  We desire to find our own idealized image; they're supposed to be globes, civilizations more perfect than ours; in other worlds we expect to find the image of our own primitive past."

"What are G-formations? They are not persons, nor are they copies of specific individuals, but rather materialized projections of what out brain contains regarding a particular person."

"the content of this architecture is motion, intent and purposive. We observe a fragment of the process, the trembling of a single string in a symphonic orchestra of super giants, and on top of what we know-we only know, without comprehending-that at the same time above us and beneath us, in the plunging deep, beyond the limits of sight and imagination there are multiple, million folds simultaneous transformations connected to one another like the notes of musical counterpoint....we are its unhearing audience."