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Thursday, June 25th, 2009
"Maybe she just wrote this way because she's crazy" is their way of saying that Dickinson can't possibly have thought about how slant rhyme unsettles the reader, or how her dashes would disrupt the flow of traditional meter in evocative ways. She was just crazy, and so none of our methodological processes of analysis can be used. Crazy is a get-out-of-analysis-free card.
A White Bear has a thoughtful post up today about teaching Dickinson (and David Foster Wallace) to her English students without letting the discussion of the works get derailed talking about how the author was crazy. This has come up a lot in my experience of literature because I've noticed over the years, many of the authors that have really spoken to me have had psychological problems -- enough to have made me think at times that being crazy, or damaged, or addictive was a privilege, something I envied these artists. Which of course is pretty screwed up in a lot of ways. Anyways, AWB's take on it is clear-headed and meaningful, recommended reading.
posted evening of June 25th, 2009: 5 responses
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Gabe passes along a link to a great silent short, from a French company called Eclipse Film, dated 1912:
Pretty miraculous job of restoration -- I'm not sure who did the restoration but I thank whoever it was. And thanks, Gabe!
 Update: the film is taken from Flicker Alley's compilation of restored shorts, Saved From the Flames. I assume but am not sure that the restoration was done by Flicker Alley. From Lobster Films comes information that the director and star is Ernest Servaes; this was the first of three short comedies about Arthème.
posted evening of June 25th, 2009: Respond
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Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
To expand on a comment in the previous post, I just can't understand this choice by Pontiero: the Portuguese ...no interesse desta editora e da harmonia das nossas futuras relações, Profissionais. Espero que não lhe tenha passado... is translated as...for the sake of the publishing house and harmony in our future relationship. Professional, I trust you're not suggesting... Now I'm just really confused as to why Pontiero would have transposed the comma preceding "Profissionais" and the period after it. My initial thought when I read the English sentence was, this would "sound right" in Portuguese because the adjective follows the noun, so Raimundo is "completing the thought" of his interlocutor, whereas in English he's inserting a word in the middle of her thought. But the punctuation issue is separate. In the original, Raimundo adds his adjective directly in reply to her -- she is a little taken aback and pauses before replying. In the translation as it stands here, Raimundo pauses before replying, and she comes back with a quick riposte. I'm sort of flummoxed as to why this would be done -- it changes the sense of the passage and for no good reason that I can see.
Thinking about this a little further: I guess it's possible that the change in punctuation is a way of addressing the word-order issue -- that the quick "professional" following "relationship" sounds right in Portuguese, but in English the longer pause is necessary because the "correction" is being inserted prior to the end of the previous sentence. This does not seem right to me -- I think the flow of conversation would still work even though there's a slightly false note introduced by the word order -- but it makes some sense as a reasoning behind this change. (And/or, another possibility is that Pontiero is having a little fun with me by getting me to proof-read a novel about proof-reading.)
posted evening of June 24th, 2009: Respond
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Dogs had been barking for centuries, therefore, the world was unchanged! I went in for jury duty today -- was not selected for a jury and indeed did not even participate in a voir dire, though I did wait in a pool of potential jurors in the lovely walnut-panelled room of a civil court. 8 jurors were selected before they called my name. Anyways I got a lot of time today to read The History of the Siege of Lisbon, I thought I'd post some of the notes from today's reading.In general I'm just really turned on by the idea of this novel, a story about proof-reading and its consequences. Raimundo's character is seeming pretty familiar to me from Saramago's other books, I'm waiting for him to distinguish himself -- which I think will happen in his creation/telling of the history. I'm steeling myself a bit for not being convinced by Maria's character and by the relationship between the two of them -- and thinking I'd like to write a paper about weaknesses in Saramago's female characters -- but a little hopeful that he will surprise me here.
Perhaps a moment of agitation, suggested the Production Director, as if trying to be helpful. Raimundo Silva expected a predictably brusque reaction from the Editorial Director, but it did not come, and then he realised the phrase had been foreseen, there would be no dismissal, everything would end up in words, yes, no, perhaps, and the sense of relief was so overwhelming, that he could feel his body weaken, his spirit unburden...
I felt my first really strong sympathy for Raimundo at the point of his "trial," when his employers are debating how he will be disciplined. Up to here I'd been finding his character amusing and identifying with him in a sort of wry way; but here -- and in the pages leading up to this point -- I could feel his humiliation and his relief as if they were precisely my own. I'm identifying this trial as Kafkaesque though I recognize that it differs in a lot of key respects from Kafka -- the feeling of total identification with the main character's humiliation is I think what drives this.
So far I have managed to be Raimundo Silva, Splendid, now let's see if you can stay that way, for the sake of the publishing house and harmony in our future relationship. Professional, I trust you're not suggesting it could be otherwise, I was simply finishing off your phrase, the proof-reader's job is to propose solutions that will eliminate any ambiguity, either in matters of style or meaning, I presume you know that ambiguity is in the mind of the person listening or reading, Especially if the stimulus came to them from the person writing or speaking...
A lot of beauty here. This is a passage where I can see ways that the translation is coming up a little short -- I can imagine the phrasing in the original and how it would be a little more convincing (and I just checked it out against a digital copy of the original) -- alas! If only English were a little more like Portuguese! I'm appreciating it but it seems like I might not be as happy with it if I were just reading it as is, and not making allowances for its being a translation. After R. gets home from his meeting with his employers, he turns on the TV "to keep his mind blank" and watches Leonard Cohen on a music program. I'm dying to know what songs Cohen was singing and why Saramago picked Cohen in particular.
posted afternoon of June 24th, 2009: Respond
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Clerical errors, like mirrors and fatherhood, tend to multiply creation. When I applied for my medical insurance, I gave the insurance company my date of birth and my social security number; I gave the same information to my automobile insurance company, and likewise the insurer of my life. But come to find, three different people hold these three policies, all of whom share my name. The man who drives my car, who listens to my mix tapes in its stereo, was born a day later than I. The man who stands to be reimbursed for my hospital stays, who is the same age as I, has a social security number which if its 5th and 7th digits were transposed, would be mine; whether this is due to sloppy handwriting on my part, or a mistake in some link of the chain of transcription leading to the insurance company, I don't know. And the person against whose death I am insured -- she shares all of her vital statistics with me except for gender. Somewhere the wrong box was checked. I'll have trouble when I try to collect the benefits due me, assuming I cannot produce the particular alternate persona to whom each insurer considers itself indebted.
posted afternoon of June 24th, 2009: 2 responses
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Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
Until you attain the truth,
you will not be able to amend it.
But if you do not amend it,
you will not attain it. Meanwhile,
do not resign yourself.
- from The Book of Exhortations | Enquanto não alcançares a verdade,
não poderes corrigi-la.
Porém, se a não corrigires,
não a alcançarás. Entretanto,
não te resignes. |
The epigraph to The History of the Siege of Lisbon cites the same source as the epigraph to Blindness -- what is this source? The Portuguese wiki page on the novel states that it is the Book of Exhortations of El-Rei Dom Duarte, who is King Edward the Eloquent of Portugal. Other sites state that the epigraphs come from Deuteronomy, or from a fictional Book of Exhortations. I like the Portuguese wiki page's idea -- does not appear to be any transcription of Dom Duarte's book online for me to check however. (An edition of it was published in 1982, is all I've been able to find.) I'm pretty sure the Deuteronomy idea is wrong -- the two epigraphs do not sound biblical. The idea that the source is fictional is certainly possible -- it's what I had been leaning towards -- but would not be as interesting.
posted evening of June 23rd, 2009: Respond
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Monday, June 22nd, 2009
Alfonso Daniels of BBC prints an interview with Saramago today -- talking among other things about The Notebook, the blog-book which will be published this month, and a new novel which will be coming out in the fall, the one he mentioned at the end of last year.
posted morning of June 22nd, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, June 21st, 2009
The proof-reader said, Yes, this symbol is called deleatur, we use it when we need to supress and erase, the word speaks for itself, and serves both for separate letters and complete words, it reminds me of a snake that changes its mind just as it is about to bite its tail, Well observed, Sir, truly, for however much we may cling to life, even a snake would hesitate before eternity...
What a great opening sentence! This is the beginning of The History of the Siege of Lisbon -- actually the opening sentence lasts for several pages, a conversation between a historian and his proof-reader. Sweet. (I never knew what dele stood for -- there is no deleatur in Unicode, but ₰ is the pfennigzeichen, which is the identical character.)
posted evening of June 21st, 2009: 4 responses
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My initial reaction to part 2 of Life and Times of Michael K was to feel kind of let down at the change in narrative perspective -- it seemed kind of like if the the next section after Benjy's narrative in The Sound and the Fury had been told a clinician attempting to diagnose Benjy... But I warmed to it pretty quickly. It is not Michael's story, this section of the novel is the doctor's story; I could express it as a criticism of Coetzee, that he is only telling one person's story at a time, not allowing his characters to interact -- but I think this sort of solitude is part of the fabric of the universe he has built here. As the section goes on, Coetzee seems more and more comfortable in the doctor's consciousness. This passage, from just after they've found that Michael has absconded, is full of rigor and insight and beauty:
It occurred to me that if I followed after him, proceeding down the avenue in a straight line, I could be at the beach by two o'clock. Was there any reason, I asked myself, why order and discipline should not crumble today rather than tomorrow or next month or next year? What would yield the greater benefit to mankind: if I spent the afternoon taking stock in my dispensary, or if I went to the beach and took off my clothes and lay in my underpants absorbing the benign spring sun, watching the children frolic in the water, later buying an ice-cream from the kiosk on the parking lot, if the kiosk is still there? What did Noël ultimately achieve labouring at his desk to balance the bodies out against the bodies in? Would he not be better off taking a nap? Maybe the universal sum of happiness would be increased if we declared this afternoon a holiday and went down to the beach, commandant, doctor, chaplain, PT instructors, guards, dog-handlers all together with the six hard cases from the detention block, leaving behind the concussion case to look after things. Perhaps we might meet some girls. For what reason were we waging the war, after all, but to augment the sum of happiness in the universe? Or was I misremembering, was that another war I was thinking of?
 Also in this section we get (from Noël) the first mention of any concrete dates -- he is 60 years old, and he was a child "in the 1930's" -- this seems to confirm my idea that the novel is set around 1980. And again from Noël, the first mention of race in the novel, in a context that I am having a lot of trouble making any sense of: In response to the doctor's question of why they are fighting the war, he says "We are fighting this war so that minorities will have a say in their destinies." So first off, does "minorities" mean "non-white people" in South African usage? I had figured that was an American idiom -- it certainly doesn't make sense in South Africa where Boers are less than 10% of the population. And what would it mean for someone working for the South African army in 1980 to say that? I'm just confused here.
posted afternoon of June 21st, 2009: 5 responses
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Saturday, June 20th, 2009
Between this reason and the truth that he would never announce himself, however, lay a gap wider than the distance separating him from the firelight. Always, when he tried to explain himself to himself, there remained a gap, a hole, a darkness before which his understanding baulked, into which it was useless to pour words. The words were eaten up, the gap remained. His was always a story with a hole in it: a wrong story, always wrong.
What a startlingly elegant description of bad faith!One thing that is puzzling me a bit about this novel (halfway through) is the complete absense of race. I would have thought race and racial tension would be important factors in South Africa of the mid-to-late 20th Century; but so far there has been absolutely no mention of it, everything is class tension among characters whose race is not mentioned but I don't see how it could be other than white. I'm not quite sure what to make of this; one idea is that apartheid means the white characters have no interaction with blacks -- though my understanding was that blacks were transported from the "homelands" into white areas to work -- another possibility is that I'm reading this wrong, and the setting is not historical South Africa but a hypothetical, allegorical location.
posted evening of June 20th, 2009: Respond
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