Jacob Siefring
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jsief.bsky.social
Jacob Siefring
@jsief.bsky.social
1.7K followers 760 following 2K posts
public library worker. editor @ the empyrean series. translator of some books (FR->EN). ottawa, ontario. | jsief.com
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jsief.bsky.social
this book looks awesome, almost irresistible. and i don’t even fish
November 10, 2025 at 4:59 PM
jsief.bsky.social
in the courtyard of the biosciences bldg earlier today.
November 7, 2025 at 9:12 PM
jsief.bsky.social
some acquisitions today from my local used book shop. looking forward to dipping into these over the next months
November 2, 2025 at 10:15 PM
jsief.bsky.social
now for another memoir, about which i have heard some things
November 1, 2025 at 4:13 PM
jsief.bsky.social
It's been abt a year since we republished the first supernatural horror novel in English literature, in a modernized text by Steven Moore. ‘The Adventures of Lady Egeria’ (1585) is an incredibly gruesome & violent book that shows the stylistic influence of John Lyly asterismbooks.com/product/the-...
October 31, 2025 at 8:53 PM
jsief.bsky.social
i walk by here 7:59am most weekdays. slanting amber light of autumn mornings
October 30, 2025 at 12:04 AM
jsief.bsky.social
mosses & lichens along the cliffs
October 28, 2025 at 12:27 AM
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some things i find in the zone defy my understanding
October 27, 2025 at 11:47 PM
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October 27, 2025 at 11:39 PM
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bedrock at the NE corner of blair & montreal rd in ottawa
October 27, 2025 at 11:34 PM
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the cliffs
October 27, 2025 at 5:37 PM
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October 27, 2025 at 5:03 PM
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morning at the spooky grotto
October 27, 2025 at 2:51 PM
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those eyes, lol
October 25, 2025 at 4:43 PM
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Niu Sengru’s ‘An Account of Marvels and of Beasts’ is a collection of forty-four supernatural tales from ninth-century China. Ghosts, vanishings, and visions of hell here abound. This edition includes a robust textual apparatus by translator Maxwell Massa.

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Oh, are the transformations of gods and faeries truly thus, or is it all the bewitchment of charlatans plying their art? For it is not a thing that the common knowledge touches on. As to sparrows becoming clams, pheasants becoming oysters, people becoming tigers, the rotted grass becoming fireflies, dung beetles becoming cicadas, and sea beasts becoming rocs... For the transformations of all things, those who write and compose their records cannot reach them with their knowledge, and it is all beyond their eyes and ears. Never before translated into English, An Account of Marvels and of Beasts is a collection of forty-four supernatural tales from ninth-century China. Ghosts, spirits, vanishings, copious drinking bouts, and visions of hell here abound. This edition includes a robust textual apparatus by translator Maxwell Massa that gives the historical context of the Tang dynasty. Included are an introduction, a biographical and a topographical appendix, and many footnotes. Niu Sengru (c. 780-848) was a native of Titao, Lunghsi, who moved to Honan. When Emperor Mu Tsung came to the throne, he was gradually promoted to the position of vice-minister of finance and deputy prime minister. Under Emperor Wu Tsung he was demoted to a minor post in Hunchow; but in the reign of Emperor Hsuan Tsung he was recalled to court as junior tutor to the crown prince. He died at the age of sixty-nine, receiving the title of high marshal and the posthumous title Wen-chien. His life appears in the Tang Dynasty History.
October 23, 2025 at 12:50 PM
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Ludwig Tieck’s ‘Peter Lebrecht’ (1795, newly translated by Douglas Robertson) is a comical first-person novel dealing with the efforts of a young writer to find an ethical place for himself in the world. A Sternean work rife with authorial play & romantic irony.

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"I surmise," Father Boniface would often cry in rapturous enthusiasm, "that this boy will someday be a tutelary spirit and reformer of the orthodox Church, a sword in God's hand brandished in defiance of heretics, a scourge of blasphemers, an annihilator of literary reviews and their reviewers, a box of smoke fit to suffocate every spark sent flying into the world by so-called enlighteners!" Peter Lebrecht (1795) is a comical first-person novel dealing with the efforts of a young writer to find an ethical place for himself in the world. Employing digression and self-commentary as his modus operandi, Tieck narrates Peter's search for love, friendship, and gainful employment, while along the way parodying the literary conventions of his time and ironizing the relationship of the author to his readers. Through a process of literary self-consciousness that owes much to Laurence Sterne, Tieck lays bare his process of composition as a matter of authorial whim and metatextual play.
October 23, 2025 at 12:46 PM
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F. Pessoa’s ‘The Mariner: A Static Drama in One Act’ is a haunting work that depicts three women inside a castle conversing over dream & reality. This bilingual facing includes an essay on the play by Antonio Tabucchi & an afterword by translator Geoffrey Brock.

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The Mariner: A Static Drama in One Act (1913), Fernando Pessoa's only completed play, features three women in a circular room in an old castle keeping vigil over a dead body. As their conversation unfolds, the mystery of their situation deepens, and they circle around the knot at the heart of the play: the relation between dream and reality, memory and grief. Altogether, it is a strange, brief, and haunting work. This bilingual facing edition of the play includes an essay on the The Mariner by Antonio Tabucchi, as well as an afterword by translator Geoffrey Brock.
October 23, 2025 at 12:42 PM
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Pierre Custot’s aquatic fantasia ‘Sturly’ (1923) is translated from French by Richard Aldington. It is the biography of a male sturgeon through the decades as he trawls the sea in search of love & wisdom. A rigorously researched yet highly original novel.

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"The night had come and suddenly the sea was on fire; they were the Noctilucae, microscopic animalculae, infinitesimal grains which glittered like imperceptible beacons. There were incalculable numbers of them and the phosphorescence was produced by all these scintillations..." First published in 1923, Pierre Custot's Sturly recounts the extraordinary life of a male sturgeon as he grows to adulthood and comes to know the mysteries, beauties, and sorrows of a wandering life among countless other creatures of the sea. Both philosophical and scientific in its outlook, here is a tale that teems with dizzying visions of a world all but unknown to the human species. In preparation for the writing of Sturly, Custot spent years studying the life cycles of various aquatic species and marine ecology, both in the field and at the Oceanographic Institute of Monaco. This is the novel's first republication since the 1920s.
October 23, 2025 at 12:36 PM
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Jean Paul’s ‘The Parson in Jubilee: An Appendix’ (1797) is translated from German (and studiously annotated with footnotes) by Matthew Spencer. Publication date of Nov. 18. See here for a partial preview of the book’s interior:

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Declaring himself the inventor of a new literary genre—one which "explains little and banters much"—Jean Paul in The Parson in Jubilee: An Appendix (1797) portrays the joys and sorrows of the Schwers family on the eve of a momentous occasion: the double fifty-year anniversaries of the parson's marriage and of his service to his village congregation. When a messenger arrives with a letter appointing the pastor's son, Ingenuin, to the pastorship from which the father will soon retire, the romance between Alithea, the family's adoptive daughter, and Ingenuin is starting to blossom. Through a series of "pastoral and encyclical letters", Jean Paul presents the reader with an uproarious satirical complement to the the books idyllic aspects. The book concludes with "The Appendix of the Appendix, or, My Christmas Eve," one of Jean Paul's most stunning and wondrous dream visions. Never before available in English, studiously annotated by translator Matthew Spencer, here is an irreverent, unclassifiable work from one of Germany's most beloved and eccentric novelists.
October 23, 2025 at 12:29 PM
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It’s been a long while! Empyrean Series nos. 46–50 are announced & available for preorder as of today.

Books by Jean Paul, Pierre Custot, & Fernando Pessoa are due out in November. Ludwig Tieck & Niu Sengru will be published next spring.

asterismbooks.com/publisher/em...
October 23, 2025 at 12:22 PM
jsief.bsky.social
i do enjoy a good memoir from time to time. this is one
October 22, 2025 at 11:48 PM
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much reading of poet Ronald Johnson (1935–98) of late. including this magnificent reissue of his walking, seasons poem ‘The Green Man’ (1967) from @uniformbooks.bsky.social
October 19, 2025 at 3:45 PM
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this album is tops
October 18, 2025 at 12:30 PM
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October 17, 2025 at 11:48 PM
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autoportrait along the river shore earlier today
October 17, 2025 at 11:22 PM