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Sunday, January 4th, 2009
Saramago posts today about writing. Interesting, this is the first I have noticed him blogging about blogging. The usual qualifiers about me not being a great translator apply; he says roughly: Has it been worth the struggle?
Have these commentaries, these opinions, these critiques been worth the struggle?
Is the world better than before? And me, what about me? Is this what I hoped for?
Am I satisfied with the work? To answer "yes" to all these questions, even only to some,
would demonstrate clearly an inexcusable mental blindness. And to respond with
a "no" without exceptions -- what could that be? Excessive modesty? Resignation? Or perhaps
the consciousness that some human labors are nothing more than a pale shadow
of the labors we dream of? It is told how Michelangelo, when he finished the Moses which
we see in Rome, in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli, tapped the statue on the knee with
his hammer and cried: "Speak!" One needn't say that Moses did not speak.
Moses never speaks. In the same way he who has written in this place at length these last few months
has not been more wordy nor more eloquent than that which could possibly be written,
precisely that which the author would like to ask for, murmuring, "Talk,
please, tell me what you are, what you have served for, if it was for anything." They are quiet, they don't respond.
What to do, then? Interrogating words is the destiny of one who writes. An article? A column? A book? It will be done, but already we know that Moses will not respond.
(This is a step forward for me; rather than using Google translator and massaging the output as I've been doing, I worked directly from the Spanish text.)
posted evening of January 4th, 2009: 3 responses
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Saw a report today that Studio Ghibli is moving towards a North American release of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea later this year, on the big screen. Nice, something to look forward to! (While we wait, you can watch some footage of the Japanese-language film at DailyMotion.)
posted afternoon of January 4th, 2009: Respond
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So what am I thinking about What Can I Do When Everything's on Fire?, which I have now read roughly a third of? Well first that too much of my reading experience with it has been asking myself what I'm thinking about it rather than doing the thinking about it... And maybe this is what I mean by calling it a difficult book, one that does not engage me, one that I have to struggle to engage myself in. I want to identify with Paulo, to get inside his head; and it seems like this should be easy -- Lobo Antunes' stream-of-consciousness seems to be intended as a straight-up portrait of the inside of Paulo's head. So what's the difficulty? Primarily I think it is the absense of any narrative framework. What makes the stream-of-consciousness in e.g. Faulkner's The Hamlet so striking, is that you have a handle on what's going on outside Isaac's consciousness. I am also a bit troubled by the decision to have Paulo "narrating" this book from inside a mental ward -- I have certainly experienced my own reality the way Paulo is doing, as repetitive images from memory; and I am not sick. (Well maybe a little sick I guess -- but nothing that requires hospitalization...) If Paulo were more lucid I think there would be a lot more room for understanding the ways he has been damaged -- this could also get past the (unmet) need I'm seeing for an external narrator. So: the book is not seeming to me like a successful one so far. But as I said, I'm in the middle of it -- I'm going to go on reading for the beaty of the language and images, and perhaps the fragmentary scenes Lobo Antunes is painting will come together into a story.
posted morning of January 4th, 2009: Respond
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Saturday, January third, 2009
Genesis 12: 5 Abram Tomó a Sarai su mujer, a Lot su sobrino y todos los bienes que HabÃan acumulado y a las personas que HabÃan adquirido en Harán; y partieron hacia la tierra de Canaán. Después llegaron a la tierra de Canaán,
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y Abram Atravesó aquella tierra hasta la encina de Moré, en las inmediaciones de Siquem. Los cananeos estaban entonces en la tierra.
Interesting -- the KJV translation has "the plain of Moreh" at the text I've emphasized; RSV has "the oak of Moreh". But this Spanish translation is calling it "encina", which means "holm oak", more specific than either of these. Blue Letter Bible's concordance doesn't show "holm oak" occurring in any English translation. Now I'm wondering what the source term is -- is encina a common tree in Spain as oak is in England, and the reference is just to a generic tree?I remember in The Stone Raft there were a couple of references to "holm oak", which I skipped over without really getting. I think Joana Carda's stick was described as being witch-hazel rather than "even" holm oak; I took this vaguely to be a way of minimizing how strong of a wood it was. Possibly a reference to this passage was intended here, though if the tree is common in Spain and Portugal, probably not.
 A bit wrong -- "Holm oak" appears four times in The Stone Raft; the one I was thinking of is on p. 106: Joana Carda responded with silence, after all, there is no law to prohibit guests from taking even a branch of holm oak into their room, much less a thin little stick, not even two meters long... At the beginning of the book there is a suggestion that Joana's branch was elm, or possibly wych-elm.
posted morning of January third, 2009: 2 responses
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Friday, January second, 2009
I've modified my RSS feed-builder to include (almost) the full text of posts, with HTML formatting (mostly) intact. I have been slow getting up to speed with RSS but this should make the site much more conveniently readable for those of you who access it that way. Readers should now show, for each post: all text, including all formatting tags; a link to comment on the post, and if there are any comments, a counter; links for any category tags associated with the post. Readers will not show any graphics or multimedia, and will not have the CSS formatting that's in the blog.
posted evening of January second, 2009: 3 responses
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The last time I read Genesis must be about ten years ago now, around the time I read the books of Samuel. This time around I am a bit surprised by how much is happening in so little space -- my memory is of quite a bit more filler material like patrilineages -- and by how familiar I am with the material. (This familiarity is a very good thing as I'm reading the text in Spanish -- knowing the story is most helpful for understanding the words.) I am finding it much easier to read attentively when the words are foreign to my ears. My method has been to read verse by verse and chapter by chapter: read the line for its sense, then look up any words I'm unfamiliar with, then go back and read it over until I really understand it. At the end of the chapter, go back and reread until I've got the whole thing well in hand. I'm figuring I'll keep with this for another week or two, probably til the end of Genesis, and then start on some Spanish text I'm more interested in for itself. Cien Años de Soledad? That might be a good pick -- I'm pretty familiar with it in translation and I don't remember the grammatical constructions being difficult. Every time I look at the Garden of Eden story I have a similar reaction, which is to feel outraged, initially, at the way Adam and Eve are treated, angry at Jehovah; and then to remember this is a parable created by humans to describe and justify their position in the world; and to go off on a tangent trying to figure out what made them want to view the world this way.* (Also, "Damn! If only they would have eaten from the other tree first!")
 * (Step 4 in this dialectic is, Remember that this worldview is my own cultural heritage, and feel disatisfied.)
posted afternoon of January second, 2009: Respond
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A cartoon fairy tale last night in which I (in the form of a small toon animal) and two other such creatures were travelling down the river on a small raft, chased by a gang of foxes in a rowboat. Our raft was smaller and easier to portage than the rowboat, and we seemed to be continually on the cusp of a resolution with moral that it's better to be small, virtuous and resourceful than big, mean and wily; but somehow that never came, and we had to keep on running with the foxes on our tail.
posted morning of January second, 2009: Respond
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Thursday, January first, 2009
Nothing to post today, looking forward to whatever's coming down the pike in 2009. Here's a tune to mark the day: (Lots of other stuff from Spike and the Slickers at YouTube.)
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Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
 Remember how Sylvia and I differed on the merits of the Despereaux movie as compared with its book? Well on the subject of The Golden Compass we're more in agreement -- the book is a gem, the movie not worth the time spent watching it. Sylvia's review: "Whoever directed that movie, they didn't make it good."
For about the first half of the movie, I was thinking about writing a long post detailing every divergence with the book and for each one, explaining how it was to the detriment of the movie. But better I think, to tell what these differences have in common: in every case, the mystery in the book is discarded and replaced with clear, dry explication. Ambiguities are absent. What I loved about the book was Lyra's development from total innocence -- here at every step of the story she connects the dots like she had been expecting the solution all her life. And maybe the worst offense is not to show Lord Asriel's treachery -- the whole ending was trimmed off, I guess because the movie was running over-long -- without this the story doesn't go anywhere. It's funny in a way -- I guess I think of the merits of this movie as being about the same as the merits of Despereaux, a fun visual romp with some sentimentality, and nothing like greatness -- but I would never recommend it the way I would recommend the mouse movie. It ought to be a great movie, a majestic movie. Falling short of that, it is not worth bothering with.
posted evening of December 31st, 2008: Respond
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Tuesday, December 30th, 2008
4th Estate celebrates 25 years of publishing books with a beautiful video presentation. The resolution is high enough to watch it full screen, I very much recommend doing so.
(h/t The Wooster Collective)
 Also at Vimeo: timelapse photography of building and shooting the city of books and the museum.
posted evening of December 30th, 2008: Respond
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