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Monday, February 16th, 2009
Some of the most moving writing at Saramago's blog has been about the plight of immigrants attempting to reach Europe (or the Canaries) from Africa. Today he writes about a group whose boat capsized almost within reach of safety: At the door in Lanzarote, at the house door which, if fortune helps, maybe will come to be the door of the new house. Twenty meters from the coast, on the Teguise Coast, when certainly laughter and words of happiness have already been exchanged at having succeeded in reaching the good port, the boat has tipped. They have crossed the hundred kilometers which separate the island from the coast of Africa, and end up dying twenty meters from salvation. Of the more than thirty immigrants whom extreme necessity obliged to confront the dangers of the sea, for the most part young men and teenagers, twenty-four were drowned, among them a pregnant woman and some children of few years. Six were saved thanks to the valor and selflessness of two surfers who hurled themselves into the water and freed them from a death which, without their intervention, would have been inevitable.
This is, in the most simple and direct words I have been able to find, the square story [?] of what has happened here. I do not know what more I could possibly say. Today words fail me and only emotion remains. Until when?
Here is a recommendation: watch the video I've linked to. It attempts a style which others have used on YouTube, that of a magnificent program about the drama of immigration, which Marisa Márquez has directed on Spanish TV. The fragment which is circulating on the Internet is owing to the intervention of Pilar, who sympathized with the victims and pointed out those responsible.
Video is at the link. CNN reports the story here; they say 19 were drowned rather than 24. I am unsure about some of this translation -- the first sentence is a little shaky and "the square story of what has happened here" is a total guess. But I think it is sufficient to get the idea of the post across.
posted evening of February 16th, 2009: Respond
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...his favorite purple passage remained the one concerning the name "Guermantes," with whose hue his adjacent ultramarine merged in the prism of his mind, pleasantly teasing Van's artistic vanity.Hue or who? Awkward. Reword! (marginal note in Ada Veen's late hand).
AWB (in the course of an amusing story about the film rights to Ada) calls it "the least filmable story in the history of fiction" -- she is probably right; but I am thinking it would work really well as a reader's theater. The sentences have such a vibrant energy, such rhythm, it would be a treat to hear them read aloud, with feeling. It seems like pacing is a crucial element of this story -- like wandering off in thought will detract from the reading.
posted afternoon of February 16th, 2009: Respond
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A White Bear's post on re-reading Ada has got me sufficiently intrigued, I just pulled my copy off the shelf, thinking "I'm between books right now, why not take a look?" (I had been thinking of reading The Counterlife, but the opening pages turned me off sufficiently, I don't think I'm up for it.) A beautiful volume, I'm thinking as I open it. Folded inside the front cover is a family tree of characters from Anna Karenina -- in my hand, though I have no memory of creating it.* It was originally given as a birthday present from one person with a Russian name to another person with a Russian name, with a wish on the inside cover that the recipient might "someday find your Ada", which seems a little perverse given the incest angle. (I bought it used in NYC, I would say in about 1990.) The bookmark is a Foreign Exchange receipt from Bank of Jamaica, in the name of the person to whom the birthday wishes are addressed. These are nice details for drawing me in, before I've even begun to read.
 * This is a little strange, honestly -- Ada makes plenty of reference to Karenina to be sure; but if memory serves, I read Karenina much later, in at least the mid-90's.
posted afternoon of February 16th, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, February 15th, 2009
From GarcÃa Lorca's "Ansia de Estatua",
Rumor.
Aunque no quede más que el rumor.
Aroma.
Aunque no quede más que el aroma. is translated (in New Directions' 1955 Selected Poems of Federico GarcÃa Lorca, various translators) as:Rumor.
Though nothing may remain but the rumor.
Odor.
Though nothing may remain but the odor. It seems strange to me not to use "aroma" to translate "aroma", keeping the look of the poem closer to the original. A possible objection is that "aroma" in English connotes a pleasant smell, I'm not sure it does in Spanish; but by the same token, "odor" connotes an unpleasant smell -- if I were looking for a neutral term I would use "scent". The rest of this sweet, sweet poem is below the fold.
Pero arranca de mà el recuerdo
y el color de las viejas horas.*
Dolor.
Frente al mágico y vivo dolor.
Batalla.
En la auténtica y sucia batalla.
¡Pero quita la gente invisible
que rodea perenne mi casa! * I'm not sure why but these two lines make me think about Borges' The Circular Ruins every time I read them.
↻...done
posted morning of February 15th, 2009: 2 responses
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GarcÃa Lorca's poetry (in snippets) makes Sylvia giggle. We're sitting together, I'm skipping around reading some of his lines in Spanish while she looks at the Spanish and at the translation, identifying some words she knows (verde, caballo, negro...) and putting forth silly interpretations for the lines and groups of lines.
Con la sombra en la cintura
ella sueña en su baranda
verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de frÃa plata.
"But why would someone's eyes be cold?..." (Note: I just found a pretty sweet flamenco version of this poem, "Romance Sonambulo", on Spanish TV.)Los caballos negros son
Las herraduras son negras Leads to lots of talk about black horses.La aurora de Nueva York tiene
cuatro columnas de cieno
y un huracán de negras palomas
que chapotean las aguas podridas. "That means four of the five boroughs have mud, and one out of five has black doves and water -- birds from the other four have to go to that one to get water." (And wow! there are just a ton of GarcÃa Lorca-inspired performances on YouTube. Here is an Andalusian jazz ballet interpretation of "Aurora de Nueva York.") She is very taken with "cieno", which is translated in a subsequent poem as "slime", and here as "mud". "If they're talking about four boroughs, it means mud, if they talk about one it means slime."
 Also: La aurora de Nueva York gime
Por las inmensas escaleras
buscando entre las aristes
nardos de anguistia dibujada "That means four of the five boroughs have stairways. I want to be in the one with elevators."
posted morning of February 15th, 2009: Respond
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Yesterday I was talking with Ellen about Elizabeth Costello, how Elizabeth is herself a novelist and there is a lot of discussion of reading and writing in the book; Sylvia interjected, "It would be cool if there was a book that had someone reading the book that had someone reading the book that had..." Nice!  We talked about mirrors for a little while. And then, this morning we were looking at xkcd's Sierpinski Valentine, and checked out Wikipædia's article about Sierpinski Triangles (which has a nice animation) -- I asked Sylvia if she knew what infinity meant, she said "Yeah, like something that never ends." And she made reference back to the book she had been talking about yesterday -- I found it pretty exciting that she would make this connection.
 And this is funny: apparently David Foster Wallace made the claim that Infinite Jest is structured like a Sierpinski triangle.
posted morning of February 15th, 2009: Respond
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Saturday, February 14th, 2009
Well: the end of Elizabeth Costello did not, as I was vaguely hoping, tie things together; if anything it further unravelled them. I'm not sure right now what to think this book is about -- the longing Costello feels for union with the Other, variously expressed as Animal Nature or as Divine Nature; her role as an author in making that union possible for the reader (? -- I just put these words together now -- are they in the story?) How expressing arguments mediates with belief in the principles she is arguing for. Her relationship with colonial history. Her aging, of course. And other tangents... I am dividing the novel into four quite distinct parts: Chapters 1 through 6, about public speaking and argument (the plot of the novel, as far as it can be said to have a plot, is confined to this part); Chapter 7, about union with God; Chapter 8, a fable about justifying one's beliefs; and the afterword (with its epigraph), which seems to be about union with God and insanity. (And just now I noticed that Coetzee calls them not "Chapters" but "Lessons".) Let's look at the ending of each of these sections: Final paragraph of Lesson 6: There ought to be a third alternative, some way of rounding off the morning and giving it shape and meaning: some confrontation leading to some final word. There ought to be an arrangement such that she bumps into someone in the orridor, perhaps Paul West himself; something should pass between them, sudden as lightning, that will illuminate the landscape for her, even if afterwards it returns to its native darkness. But the corridor, it seems, is empty.
Final paragraph of Lesson 7: A vision, an opening up, as the heavens are opened up by a rainbow when the rain stops falling. Does it suffice, for old folk, to have these visions now and again, these rainbows, as a comfort, before the rain starts pelting down again? Must one be too creaky to join the dance before one can see the pattern?
Final paragraph of Lesson 8: The man behind the desk has evidently had enough of questions. He lays down his pen, folds his hands, regards her levelly. 'All the time,' he says. 'We see people like you all the time.'
Final sentences of Afterword: Drowning, we write out of our separate fates. Save us. The afterword is Coetzee writing in the voice of Lord Philip Chandos' wife Elizabeth. (Wheels within wheels: Elizabeth Chandos ~ Elizabeth Costello; Costello wrote a book from the point of view of Leopold Bloom's wife Molly...) Lesson 7 might be the most interesting part of the whole book, with the most to think about. Possibly the final paragraph of Lesson 7 above is meant to represent Costello's death.
posted afternoon of February 14th, 2009: 5 responses
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An experience that I've had many times: I am browsing in a bookstore (usually by the shelves marked "Fiction" or as the case may be, "Classics"), pulling down titles that intrigue me, looking at quotes on the back jacket or the inside front cover, first sentences, etc. After a little while of this I get into a rhythm, the browsing is what I'm doing, I melt into the bookstore a little... and then some new book that I've never heard of before pops into my hand, and it suddenly seems like just the right thing for me to read. Today I was looking in the new bookstore in Maplewood and found a book which I had never heard of, and which seems like just the right thing. It is Night Train to Lisbon, by Pascal Mercier (a Swiss author with a French name, who writes in German) -- the three epigraphes are from Jorge Manrique, Michel Montaigne, Fernando Pessoa. (The Montaigne quote is especially to my tastes -- "We are all patchwork," it begins, and ends, "There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others.") The initial sentence has a slightly formulaic whiff about it: "The day that ended with everything different in the life of Raimund Gregorius began like countless other days." -- But it is a formula that has worked on me many times, and I have high hopes for this time.
posted afternoon of February 14th, 2009: Respond
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How beautiful it is, this world, even if it is only a simulacrum. At least there is that to fall back on.
I'm trying to figure out what I think about the new direction Coetzee is taking in the last part of Elizabeth Costello. It is very much unexpected, which I count as a good thing. I'm having some trouble figuring out quite how to relate it to the rest of the book; but there is a general sense that the relationship exists -- Costello's character is the same, the narrator's voice is the same. I'm holding out hope they will be sewn together in the final ten pages.'What are you saying in your confession?''What I said before: that I cannot afford to believe. That in my line of work one has to suspend belief. [Ooh, lovely! -- ed.] That belief is an indulgence, a luxury. That it gets in the way.' 'Really. Some of us would say the luxury that we cannot afford is unbelief.' She waits for more. 'Unbelief -- entertaining all possibilities, floating between opposites -- is the mark of a leisurely existence, a leisured existence,' the woman goes on. 'Most of us have to choose. Only the light soul hangs in the air.' She leans closer. 'For the light soul, let me offer a word of advice. They may say they demand belief, but in practice they will be satisfied with passion. Show them passion and they will let you through.' 'Passion?' she replies. 'Passion the dark horse? I would have though that passion leads one away from the light, not towards it. Yet in this place, you say, passion is good enough.' I am liking the juxtaposition of belief and passion a lot. Costello thinks the line "Only the light soul hangs in the air" must be a quotation; I am not finding anything to back this up.
posted afternoon of February 14th, 2009: Respond
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Seated at one of the pavement tables she briskly composes what is to be her statement. I am a writer, a trader in fictions, it says. I maintain beliefs only provisionally: fixed beliefs would stand in my way. I change beliefs as I change my habitation or my clothes, according to my needs. On these grounds -- professional, vocational -- I reqest exemption from a rule of which I now hear for the first time, namely that every petitioner at the gate should hold one or more beliefs. She takes her statement back to the guardhouse. As she half expected, it is rejected.  And we are getting down, here, to the heart of the matter -- this is what I think. As Chapter 8 opens, Coetzee manages to startle me once again, changing his narrative style completely (while continuing to narrate in the same voice), veering into Kafkaesque allegory -- he acknowledges as much a few pages later but calls it "Kafka reduced and flattened to a parody."Costello is speaking to my concerns earlier about how nobody in this novel seems to be attached to the arguments they are making; she is a writer, a vessel for words and beliefs (like Mary or Leda is a vessel for God's seed -- I'm not sure yet what to make of this parallel but it is definitely front and center). I have got the feeling that Coetzee is writing in his own voice here -- should be wary of this given the repeated cautioning against it earlier in the book -- I was wondering, when Elizabeth defends herself against the charge that she has ignored the genocide of the Tasmanians (and implicitly, that she as a white Australian is not sensitive to issues of imperialism and oppression), whether Coetzee faces similar charges as a white South African. Perhaps the student in Chapter 1 was meaning to launch an attack on these grounds?
posted morning of February 14th, 2009: Respond
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