READIN

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

🦋 Two unrelated passages

I am finding that the narrators I identify most closely with in this book are Esther (who reminds me fairly strongly of a like-named relative of mine) and Shekure. As I was reading this passage in Shekure's narration:

Just then, when I saw that he'd opened his pink mouth like a child would have, I unexpectedly felt, yes, like putting my breast into it. With my fingers on his nape and tangled in his hair, Black would place his head between my breasts, and as my own children used to do, he'd roll his eyes back into his head with pleasure as he sucked on my nipple...

I realized that I would never be able fully to understand it without also thinking about these lines from Robyn Hitchcock's Globe of Frogs:

And when she feeds the flowers
Up they rise their pretty little heads
And when she waters them
They glow and smirk and smile in their beds

Update: Hm, well this post is getting me some interesting search engine referrals anyway...

posted morning of August 30th, 2007: Respond
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Monday, August 27th, 2007

🦋 Rear Window

It caused me a little distress during the movie that I kept thinking, no way could he have such a wide range of view -- he's like 4 or 5 feet back from the window and not able to stand up or crouch down. When I could ignore that -- which was just about all the time starting about halfway through -- it was a fantastically good movie.

(I was a little surprised, on looking it up, to find that Rear Window preceded The Wrong Man by 2 years -- my thought while watching them had been, maybe Hitchcock was trying out a sort of sardonic kitchiness in The Wrong Man but not quite getting it, and his style was more fully matured in Rear Window, or something like that; but apparently not.)

When I left the theater I was sizing up everyone I passed on the street, trying to figure out their backstory and whether they were up to no good... Catching snippets of conversation and fleshing them out. Greenwitch Village is an absolutely great neighborhood to be walking around in after watching this film.

posted morning of August 27th, 2007: Respond
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Sunday, August 26th, 2007

🦋 Aging and Death

"Stork"'s fable ب (in chapter 13) contains what may be my favorite line in the book thus far:

Once upon a time, not so very long ago and yet not so recently, everything imitated everything else, and thus, if not for aging and death, man would've never been the wiser about the passage of time.

(As far as the translation: I really like the inelegance of "would've never been the wiser". I think it sounds a little funny, but in an arresting way, not an annoying.)

...Cool! I found a magazine about translation (sadly in Spanish, which I do not read) with the original of this passage and translations into Spanish, English and French:

Her şeyin her şey tekrar ettiği ve bu yüzden yaşlanıp ölmek olmasa insanın zaman diye bir şeyin varolduğunu hiç farkedemediği ve âlemin de zaman hiç yokmuş gibi hep aynı hikâyeler ve resimlerle resmedildiği hem eski hem yeni bir zamanda, Fahir Şah'ın küçük ordusu, Selahattin Han'ın askerlerini, Semerkantlı Salim'in kısa tarihinde de anlattıği gibi, "perişan" etti. (Orhan Pamuk)

En un tiempo no demasiado lejano pero no demasiado cercano, cuando todo se repetía de tal manera que de no ser por el envejecimiento y la muerte los hombres no habrían percibido que había algo llamado tiempo y cuando el mundo era ilustrado con las mismas historias y pinturas como si el tiempo no existiera, el pequeño ejército del sha Fahir "pulverizó" a las tropas del jan Selahattin, según se cuenta en la breve Historia de Salim de Samarcanda. (Rafael Carpintero)

Once upon a time, not so very long ago yet not so recently, everything imitated everything else, and thus, if not for aging and death, man would've never been the wiser about the passage of time. Yes, when the worldly realm was repeatedly presented through the same stories and pictures, as if time did not flow, Fahir Shah's small army routed Selahattin Khan's soldiers -- as Salim of Samarkand's concise History attests. (Erdag M. Göknar)

Jadis, naguère, tout n'était que répétition du même, á l'infini. En ce temps-là, s'il n'y avait eu la décrépitude de l'âge et la mort au bout, les hommes n'auraient pas eu la conscience du temps, ne voyant pas le monde passer comme il va, mais suivant la série, immuable, des histoires et des images, répétées à l'infini. Jusqu'au jour où, selon la Brève Chronique de Salim de Samarcande, la petite armée de Fâkhir Shah "fit mordre la poussière" aux soldats du Khan Salâhuddîn. (Gilles Authier)

(The context is an article about Pamuk titled "Un autor en busca de tres traductores" by Rafael Carpintero, which I'm guessing means "An author in the (grasp?vision?...?) of three translators"....no, "in search of" says the Spanish dictionary.)

posted evening of August 26th, 2007: Respond
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🦋 I Will Be Called a Murderer

I have gone very quickly from having trouble with the narrative structure in My Name is Red to being totally entranced by it. I particularly love the variations on "my name is" in the chapter titles. "I Will Be Called a Murderer"! That strikes home before I even start reading.

posted evening of August 26th, 2007: Respond
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An idea whose time has come: a mashup of "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" from The Wind in the Willows with Frog and Toad Together. Gee, I wonder if this has ever been done -- it seems like a totally obvious thing for someone with the gift of mashing up -- I'm not totally sure how one would go about it and do not have the requisite graphical skills but. Mr. Toad takes his loyal friend and companion on a crazy ride in his new roadster in order to keep both of them away from the jar of cookies on the top shelf or something.

posted evening of August 26th, 2007: Respond

I was lucky enough to make it out to NYC this afternoon to the Film Forum's NYC Noir festival. Watched The Wrong Man (which was just so-so, kind of corny for Hitchcock), and Rear Window, which was amazing -- I either haven't seen it before or it was long enough that I had forgotten most of the bits of the plot. This was (I think) a newly restored print and it was just amazing to look at -- it took me a couple of minutes of just goggling at the scenery before I could start getting into the film. (Rather like Jimmy Stewart's character I guess).

posted evening of August 26th, 2007: Respond
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🦋 From the East

My Name is Red is set in Istanbul in 1591, at the height of the Ottoman Empire's power. In discussions of the innovation of artistic style (which I referenced yesterday), the innovation is generally identified as coming "from the East" and/or from Europe. But now in Chapter 12, in "Butterfly"'s ج fable, I see the princess of Kasvin identifying the æsthetic tradition which identifies artistic style as a flaw, as coming "from the East" -- she does not say this in a derogatory manner, which is how I had read the previous references.

So this is making me wonder whether Ottoman culture saw itself as not at all innovative. "From the East" makes sense (I think) as a description of the source cultural traditions; my understanding is that Turks originated in central Asia and migrated to the west, to Anatolia. (My understanding is also that "Ottoman" means the same thing as "Turk"; that could be totally wrong.) In this case "from the East" would have a separate meaning when it was used to identify the source of traditions, and when it was used to identify the source of putatively pernicious innovations.

posted morning of August 26th, 2007: Respond

🦋 Underlining

I don't generally do much underlining or keeping of marginal notes when I am reading. I sort of made a point of underlining passages that I found striking when I was reading Snow; I'm not sure what purpose it served or will serve, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

Now that I'm reading My Name is Red, I'm finding myself drawn to underline passages -- to the extent that if I don't have a pen handy, I will seek one out. I wonder if this is going to be my new way of reading going forward, or if it's just something about Pamuk.

posted morning of August 26th, 2007: Respond

Saturday, August 25th, 2007

🦋 Shame

Snow and My Name is Red are very different books. One thing I am thinking (at this early point) they might have in common, is a theme of embarrassment and shame motivating the principal characters. Is that too broad I wonder?

The only electronic source I have been able to find for Nezami's poetry in translation, is this version of the tale of Hüsrev and Shirin at the Mediæval Sourcebook. -- Oh wait, strike that, that is only an excerpt, and the exact same text is at the Wikipædia link as well.

(Note: a difference between the books is, My Name Is Red seems to be much faster reading than Snow, where reading 15 or 20 pages in a day would seem like a lot, and where I would put the book down for a couple of days and have plenty to chew on. This book is much more difficult to put down, at least in its early portions. I think I will go read some more.)

posted afternoon of August 25th, 2007: 1 response
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🦋 Imperfection

Here is a very interesting passage from Chapter 4 of My Name Is Red. The master illuminator is showing his apprentice a classic example of the genre:

"This is by Bihzad," the aging master said... "This is so Bihzad that there's no need for a signature."

Bihzad was so well aware of this fact that he didn't hide his name anywhere in the painting. And according to the elderly master, there was a sense of embarrassment and a feeling of shame in this decision of his. Where there is true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity.

Fearing for my life, I murdered my unfortunate victim in an ordinary and crude manner. As I returned to this fire-ravaged area night after night to ascertain whether I'd left behind any traces that might betray me, questions of style increasingly arose in my head. What was venerated as style was nothing more than an imperfection or flaw that revealed the guilty hand.

A couple of reactions:

• I wonder whether Erdağ Göknar is an inferior translator to Maureen Freely. Some of the constructions here seem a little bit strained. (Whereas for Snow, I found the easy fluency of the language to be a major selling point.)
• I of course disagree with the narrator about the æsthetic status of style; I believe I have already made stabs, here and elsewhere, at stating that I think the ultimate goal of good art is to achieve complete identity between the artist and the audience -- to "put you in his head". So style is a primary criterion of great art.
• That said I like the way the narrator states his case a lot. My first thought is that it demonstrates a Platonic world view; each individual artist is striving to transcend -- or "is judged by how far he can transcend" -- his identity to approach the ideal Artist, to create the ideal Work of Art.
• The juxtaposition of "failure to create the ideal Work of Art" and "failure to commit the Perfect Crime" is fun.

posted morning of August 25th, 2007: Respond
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