Friday, July 13, 2012

Julije Knifer: Meandering Coincidences

Nina Pops, Knifer Buch
Yesterday, checking the internet for news about my friend and co-author Zarko Radakovic, I came across a fairly new post by the artist Nina Pops. She lives in Cologne, as does Zarko, and they have frequently worked together. In this series, Zarko's manuscript (of his book Knifer) lends itself to Knifer-inspired drawings—the art and the writing working, at least in my mind's eye, like a pair of jazz musicians listening and simultaneously responding to one another. To see more of the works, click HERE.


Then this morning there was a comment on an earlier blog post that referred to Knifer (click HERE). It was from a woman interested in Zagreb, Croatia and in art history. Her blog, which has numerous posts about art in Zagreg, is HERE. She asked me about my reference to Knifer, to a visit with him in his Paris apartment. 


Zarko and I had spent the previous day with Peter Handke at his house in Chaville, just outside Paris, walking with him through the surrounding woods (in the Niemandsbucht) for hours. Still under his influence, we visited Knifer.


Stimulated by the Nina Pops drawings and by the question about Knifer, I got out my journal from that trip. Here are the pages, 9 December 1995:








Finally, Zarko's book, which I leaf through often, trying to pick out phrases I recognize, gazing through the Serbo-Croatian sentences as if through a glass darkly, hungry for the thoughts and structures of my friend's mind.



4 comments:

Elaine said...

Thank you so much for this post and the glimpse into your journal. The sketches are wonderful. I just received your email and will be responding to it shortly.

Scott Abbott said...

the sketches prove conclusively that i'm not a drawer—but they do, with the notes, help memory. it was a magical visit.

* said...

i like the drawings. besides i was at the pencil factory in cumberland where they make the derwent pencils (derwent is a lake and a river maybe and a mountain no idea at any rate it is a lake and a pencil....). it's always inspiring to see how writing equipment is being made and it is inspiring to see too other people use it like you.

Scott Abbott said...

knifer's pencils, from germany and england, in the hand of a master of graphite drawing.