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What are we reading? 6/11/2023
In case anyone needs more books the Harvard Book Store is having a virtual sale - https://hbswarehousesale.com/I didn't see how long it lasts and don't know shipping rules, but it is worth a scroll through. So far I've seen Simenon, Frederic Dard, and NYRB PBs.
AB76 wrote: "I may be just a feeling, it may be via translation but i somehow feel that european writing has something in its core that is more rewarding than books in english, of anglo-saxon origin."Have you read Michael Gorra’s review of The Pole in the 60th anniversary NYRB?
At one point he struggles with whether or not the multiple meanings in the title are relevant to an understanding of the novel. This is because, even though the novel was written in English, it was first published in Spanish and German, at Coetzee’s insistence. In neither of these language does the title, indicating someone of Polish nationality, have the secondary meanings of the English title.
That pretty much summarizes one of the issues I’ve had when reading translations. Do the implications of this English word have any relevance to the author’s meaning? Conversely, does this English translation lose implications or ambiguities inherent in the original language?
An example of the latter occurs in Faust, Part 2, Act 5. One of the allegorical figures that visit Faust is named Schuld in German. This can mean either “guilt” or “debt”; the English translator is forced to choose one, but in the original Goethe modulates between the two meanings.
With all the first folio anniversaries, my visit aged about 12 to Stratford on a family canal holiday has popped into my memory and visiting the house and listening to my mother telling my brothers all about the great playwright.Its quite fascinating to see how so much of his life remains open to lively debate and dscussion regarding faith, authorship and other elements. For a person in an era where many writers and thinkers are very well documented, it suprises me how a lot of what we know about Shakey is based on suggestions and ideas.
While he died at a relatively young age of 52, in todays terms, to not have a series of portraits suprises me or more evidence known. Maybe we will discover more on the 500th anniversary of the First Folio?
Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "I may be just a feeling, it may be via translation but i somehow feel that european writing has something in its core that is more rewarding than books in english, of anglo-saxon origi..."excellent points Bill, the conveyance of meaning in translation can be totally lost if it fails to connect or translate cultural or social meaning to the reader, in translation.
Does english, a hybrid tongue lack the variety needed with translation from Romance or Germanic languages? As a mono-lingual reader (despite pretty good German and French speaking ability), i am aware that i could be missing a whole lot in my reading of translated classics
as for the Gorra article, you are just ahead of me, i read the Miller article about half an hour ago. Gorra will be next!
MK wrote: "In case anyone needs more books the Harvard Book Store is having a virtual sale - https://hbswarehousesale.com/I didn't see how long it lasts and don't know shipping rules, but it is worth a scro..."
By the way I see
in the sale. Well worth a read.
Mod
I don't understand what you mean by lack of variety. After all English is the language with the most words ... (unless it's Korean 😲).
This melding of languages means English has a much larger vocabulary than either the Germanic languages or the members of the Romance language family according to Oxford.
scarletnoir wrote: "MK wrote: "No eye-rolls allowed. Onions have to be my favorite vegetable. That is based on there are few days when at least a slice or two are consumed. For example, this morning I had an onion san..."Haven't run across Ploughman's here, but that doesn't mean much as my eating out rarely goes beyond coffee and a sweet.
Whenever, though, I have a grilled cheese sandwich, it's always sliced onion inside two slices of cheese. I suppose I ought to look up a recipe for pickled onions.
Here's a book, A Death in Malta: An Assassination and a Family's Quest for Justice on my library hold list (FT gift link) - https://on.ft.com/3ucrw59Probably my first non-work trip abroad was with an English tour group for a week in Malta. Even though it was early October, it was a tad warm for me. But the history shown was so worth it. We did revolt one morning and opted for coffee instead of yet another cathedral/church visit. I still have fond memories and continue to recommend you have a box of kleenex by your side when reading Monsarrat's The Kappillan of Malta.
Gpfr wrote: "AB76 wrote: "Does english, a hybrid tongue lack the variety needed with translation from Romance or Germanic languages?.."I don't understand what you mean by lack of variety. After all English is..."
good point but i wonder if it has less variety in subtle ways than other languages, in meaning and implications of words. logic may suggest not but i havent seen any conclusive proof of more variety as yet
Had to drop the Jan Morris book on HK. In fact i dont think i have enjoyed anything she has written, the potential is there but the books always seem very flat and a real effort to get through.The actual history of HK was interesting but Morris split up these sections with tales of the colony in 1988, where greed and money seemed to be more important than anything else and it all felt rather vulgar.
Its a shame, i move on to a collection of essays on photography for Henri Cartier Bresson, after enjoying his photobook Europeans last year
AB76 wrote: "i read the Miller article about half an hour ago."I was surprised that the article on The Crucible didn't mention Robert Ward's 1961 operatic adaptation. It won a Pulitzer Prize which could be seen, at least in part, as a belated recognition of Miller's play.
Bill wrote: "AB76 wrote: "i read the Miller article about half an hour ago."I was surprised that the article on The Crucible didn't mention Robert Ward's 1961 operatic adaptation. It won a Pulit..."
i hadnt heard of that opera, i'm not a big opera fan but sounds like an interesting idea
AB76 wrote: "i hadnt heard of that opera, i'm not a big opera fan but sounds like an interesting idea"I noticed a number of musical connections when I listed the translations I’d read in the past few years.
Doctor Faustus is, of course, about a composer.
Several of the books were made into operas: Faust (many times), War and Peace (Prokofiev), Boris Godunov (Mussorgsky), and Niels Lyhne (Delius, Fennimore and Gerda).
A number of 17th century Italian composers set verses from The Liberation of Jerusalem, including Monteverdi’s dramatic madrigal, Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda.
Finally, I read The Complete Claudine after I learned that an extended section in the third book is set at the Bayreuth Festival.
Yesterdat’s cryptic clue20. When everything seems to fail, yet nosh with seafood works (3,2,5,4)
Did anyone get it? Solution later.
First clue today’s Telegraph
9. Sea creature -- sound of body following rear of dhow (5)
Mod
I've started Casablanca Circus by Yasmine Chami."I've now finished this book which I liked a lot.
May and Cherif, history lecturer and architect, after studying and living in France, return to their home town of Casablanca before the birth of their 2nd child. Difficulties soon arise. The authorities want to get rid of the shanty towns (karyanes) housing workers who have come to the city, by rehousing the inhabitants on the outskirts. Cherif and his French partner who have worked on social housing, get the contract for such a project to rehouse the people living in a karyane by the sea, near Cherif and May's apartment. May becomes more and more concerned by this, getting to know the people living there and seeing how, although their living conditions are bad, a move will endanger the precarious fabric of their lives — how will they get to work etc.
In addition to this conflict, things become difficult on a personal level, as Cherif (who comes from a poorer background than May) feels more and more that the man of the family needs to provide and decide ...
Recommended. I'll look for other books by her. As I said earlier, her books don't seem to have been translated.
CCCubbon wrote: "Yesterdat’s cryptic clue20. When everything seems to fail, yet nosh with seafood works (3,2,5,4)
Did anyone get it? Solution later.
First clue today’s Telegraph
9. Sea creature -- sound of bo..."
whale?
One very unhappy bunny here. Due to have hip replacement on 8th December. Hospital rang today with a query and I told them I tested positive for covid today. Operation now postponed until January23. Should have kept my mouth shut. And I only had my latest vaccination last month.
So lots of reading to be done.
Mod
oh, that's too bad ...
giveusaclue wrote: "One very unhappy bunny here. Due to have hip replacement on 8th December. Hospital rang today with a query and I told them I tested positive for covid today. Operation now postponed until January23..."oh no....i hope your covid isnt too bad, thats a bad double whammy and you would probably be negative by 8th Dec as well.
AB76 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "One very unhappy bunny here. Due to have hip replacement on 8th December. Hospital rang today with a query and I told them I tested positive for covid today. Operation now postp..."I nearly didn't bother testiing. Just feels like a bit of a cold
So sorry! It would have been good to have got it over with.
So sorry to hear that, giveusaclue.
Commiserations Give. What bad luck. I feel for you..
giveusaclue wrote: "AB76 wrote: "giveusaclue wrote: "One very unhappy bunny here. Due to have hip replacement on 8th December. Hospital rang today with a query and I told them I tested positive for covid today. Operat..."thats how i detected mine back in oct....bit of a cold and thought "lets test". hope yours doesnt get as bad as mine, it was 5 days of a mild cold and then 5 days of total sleepiness and lethargy
In reply to your mention of the Gorra article on Coetzee Bill, i just read it and it reminds me what a difficult, contrary and odd writer Coetzee isas a young man he fascinated me as a chronicler(i imagined) of the south africa that was absent from popular voices in the 1990s, the afrikaaner minority. Instead he never seemed tied to that minority, or interested, unlike the better writer and his comtemporary Andre Brink)
he then moved even further from being anything to do with south africa but simply being born there and went to australia, he now seems to be renouncing english and removing himself form that identity too
i loathed all his novels i read, they dissapointed me on levels i had never imagined, being so boring, so pedantic and so lacking in humanity. Tim Winton was another author identified with a nation i love(australia) who made me want to howl...
the only book i half enjoyed was Youth
maybe Coetzee is ahead of the game in forging a fiction that has no place with its authors origins, when an icelandic man could possibly set a novel in the sahara and it would be more believable than a saharan native (yet to happen but it could)
giveusaclue wrote: "One very unhappy bunny here. Due to have hip replacement on 8th December. Hospital rang today with a query and I told them I tested positive for covid today. Operation now postponed until January23..."Shoot, sorry to hear that, I hope your illness stays mild.
Bill wrote: "That pretty much summarizes one of the issues I’ve had when reading translations. Do the implications of this English word have any relevance to the author’s meaning? Conversely, does this English translation lose implications or ambiguities inherent in the original language?"Now, that is an excellent question. I have no answer wrt the book you refer to, as I haven't read it. But...
I am currently reading Évariste by François-Henri Désérable (more on that later) - who is the best writer I've discovered in the last 10 years, at least. The author employs an incredible range of language, from modern terms to the archaic or defunct, as well as referring to a large number of historical, fictional and mythical sources. But (in this case) chasing down all of that is worth the effort - for me, anyway (unlike a few other authors I could mention - but won't here).
All of that could be translated. But - again - Désérable also uses French words which frequently have two or three meanings - perfectly deliberately (it's obvious: other unambiguous terms are available). The skill and care needed to write like this is remarkable; what is more - it is also entertaining and frequently funny, or moving.
So - the books could be translated (that they haven't been is a shame on English-medium publishers); they would still be effective and entertaining; but something would also be lost, as the ambiguity of some well-chosen words or phrases would inevitably be impossible to reproduce.
MK wrote: "I ought to look up a recipe for pickled onions..."I'm not sure it would be worth it! Be aware that 'pickling onions' are pretty small, not at all normal size... In my experience, they can be really nice or far too sharp and acidic, depending on producer.
giveusaclue wrote: "One very unhappy bunny here. Due to have hip replacement on 8th December. Hospital rang today with a query and I told them I tested positive for covid today. Operation now postponed until January23..."What a shame, give.
Not very happy here. Just had a poem modded and I cannot see why.
By the way
20. When everything seems to fail, yet nosh with seafood works (3,2,5,4) - anagram of yetnoshseafood.
Diana found the sea creature in the other clue.
AB76 wrote: "i wonder if it has less variety in subtle ways than other languages, in meaning and implications of words..."I have no definitive answer to that - maybe there isn't one - but I suppose that as a hypothesis one could suggest that a language with 'fewer words' is more likely to contain 'words with multiple alternate meanings' which would increase the possibility for writing with deliberate ambiguity.
Mod
This is of course a problem in translation, more problematic with some books than others.
But to pick up AB's remarks again, "Does english, a hybrid tongue lack the variety needed with translation from Romance or Germanic languages?"
"less variety in subtle ways than other languages, in meaning and implications of words"
I disgree very strongly — it's not a question of a lack in English, but an inherent problem in translation from and to any language. The same thing could be found in translating from English, where some subtleties of language in the original, some possibilities of double meanings, couldn't be conveyed in the same way in the target language.
Gpfr wrote: "scarletnoir wrote: "the ambiguity of some well-chosen words or phrases would inevitably be impossible to reproduce. ..."This is of course a problem with translation.
But to pick up AB's remark a..."
good point GP, a problem with translation and probably something which makes being a translator incredibly difficult
i have noticed a few translations from one non english tongue to another and then translated into english, which must be even harder. Imagine a romanian original, translated into french and then the french text used to create an english language translation
giveusaclue wrote: "One very unhappy bunny here. Due to have hip replacement on 8th December. Hospital rang today with a query and I told them I tested positive for covid today. Operation now postponed until January23..."Crap! Sorry to hear that.
Mod
Yes, one definitely risks ending up rather far from the original! It would be really interesting to be able to read the 3 languages in such a case and compare.
Gpfr wrote: "But to pick up AB's remark again, "Does english, a hybrid tongue lack the variety needed with translation from Romance or Germanic languages?""I would think that the contrary of @AB76's question is the case. Roots in both Romance and Germanic languages should make translation from tongues with either root into English more facile (though perhaps multiplying the number of words translators term "false friends": words of identical or similar spelling with different meanings in the two languages).
I found this Wikipedia page giving a word count for dictionaries in various languages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
In regard to translation, I greatly enjoyed George Steiner's After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation.My review gives a chapter-by-chapter summary.
Mod
Post it in a Place for a Poem
As mentioned already, I have started on Évariste, having been shamed into it by AB (!); as it's in French of an exceptionally rich kind (culturally and linguistically) I can only read it in short bursts with the aid of online dictionaries and encyclopedias. In the meantime, when I run out of steam - or in the evening when I'm tired anyway - I revert to my guilty pleasure of Ross Macdonald novels. The Ivory Grin was well up to standard, with perhaps
The building was Spanish Renaissance with a strong Inquisition hangover.
the best one-liner. It has the usual slick and cultured writing, as well as a complex - indeed, convoluted - plot. Great fun, as usual.
In The Galton Case, Lew Archer is hired to find the son of an elderly wealthy woman who wishes to re-connect before she dies. Many amusing descriptions, of which I liked:
A Harvard chair stood casually in one corner. I sat down on it, in the interests of self-improvement, and picked up a fresh copy of the Wall Street Journal. Apparently this was the right thing to do. The red-headed secretary stopped typing and condescended to notice me.
(On having his car stolen by a man with a gun):
Curlyhead talked and acted like a pro, or at least a gifted amateur with a vocation.
(On meeting a blonde - say no more!)
She waited until I was practically standing on her feet; then she yawned and stretched elastically. She had wine and sleep on her breath. But her figure was very good, lush-breasted and narrow-waisted. I wondered if it was for sale or simply on exhibition by the owner.
A young man in airline coveralls came out of the terminal and glared at me. I was making a pretty girl cry, and there ought to be a law. I assumed a very legal expression. He went back inside again.
If those quotes make you smile, you'll probably like Macdonald. If not, then not.
I'm currently reading The Chill, where a young man hires Archer to track down his missing, recent bride. In this one, as well as the wisecracks, you get some humorous asides about Zeno's paradox - not standard fare in hard-boiled fiction. Macdonald is no dunce.
Last comment for today...Sometimes, reading in a foreign language is an advantage. I came across a passage in Évariste which I didn't fully understand, and so took time out to check the meaning:
car ce n'est pas la chemise la père la pudeur à ouverture parisienne , avec pertuis...
What could this mean? I wondered... it turns out that in the XVIIIth century, prudish nuns invented a garment for young girls about to embark on marriage, which would permit intercourse without the shameful need for nakedness - here is an article (in French) about it - but the photograph should be self-explanatory!
https://passadoc.fr/chemise-conjugale...
Now, madame being French simply skipped over this without attempting further investigation: hence, initial incomprehension can at times lead to a deeper understanding!
(I might add that the website - not the book in this instance - provides a good example of how one word has multiple meanings, so which to choose?
Ce trou était parfois agrémenté de commentaires encourageants comme « Dieu le veut », non pas pour exacerber la libido muselée par tant de puritanisme, mais pour inciter les plus pusillanimes à pratiquer l’acte commandé par Dieu.
"The hole was sometimes agrémenté * with an encouraging comment such as "God wants it", not to excite the libido restrained by so much puritanism, but to incite the most pusillanimous to carry out the act ordered by God.")
*agrémenté - can mean 'embellished, adorned, spiced, topped off, enlivened... '. Which to choose? As the author is having a bit of fun, maybe 'spiced up' is best here...
giveusaclue wrote: "One very unhappy bunny here. Due to have hip replacement on 8th December. Hospital rang today with a query and I told them I tested positive for covid today. Operation now postponed until January23..."I would have been so tempted. Once this has past, please consider staying out of the public sphere until after the 23rd.
Here's a new spy story getting buzz here in the States -The Helsinki Affair.PS - on a political note, so glad to see Braverman gone.
Gpfr wrote: "CCCubbon wrote: "Not very happy here. Just had a poem modded and I cannot see why...."Post it in a Place for a Poem"
Duly done
Bill wrote: "Gpfr wrote: "But to pick up AB's remark again, "Does english, a hybrid tongue lack the variety needed with translation from Romance or Germanic languages?""I would think that the contrary of @AB7..."
sometimes i think our roots in romance and germanic languages can lead to false trails but i can certainly understand a lot more spanish than i expected, when i barely speak it, using the logical approximations of words that i hear or read, from the romance base of english.
oddly though my knowledge of German is good, with most Germanic languages (apart from maybe Dutch), i find the common words less and less consistent and baffling.
scarletnoir wrote: "Last comment for today...https://passadoc.fr/chemise-conjugale...
..."
Wow, after reading Zola I thought the Brits were strait-laced but this has changed my mind about the French.
FrancesBurgundy wrote: "Wow, after reading Zola I thought the Brits were strait-laced but this has changed my mind about the French..."Puritanism seems to be a facet of the more fanatical adherents of certain religions, rather than a national characteristic... of course, if that religion is dominant in a certain country or area, this can give the impression that the puritanism is inherent in the inhabitants - but who knows what goes on behind closed doors? Hypocrisy is another common (not 'universal', note...) characteristic of the very religious.
Please tell us the solution to the anagram, CCC… .
Diana wrote: "Please tell us the solution to the anagram, CCC… ."One of those days
This one from today’s T18. Under church, climbers will find badgers (7)
( i can understand how the answer is arrived at but I would spell it differently? Another letter. Do you agree?)
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Ersatz TLS
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(I haven't forgotten my Shakespeare post, it's in the pipeline.)