|
|
Friday, July 29th, 2011
 In case you have not been following comments on my years-old threads (and really -- who could blame you?): Ben has convinced me to re-open the Novalis translation project that I started back in 2007 but never really got anywhere with. He has contributed some excellent suggestions regarding nearly all of the sentences in the poem's second stanza. Perhaps you started reading this blog sometime since 2007 and you would be interested in helping out with this project, if only you knew about it! -- Well, here is your chance. We're trying to improve on the various English translations of Novalis' poem Hymns to the Night, and we're trying to do it by committee. Take a look and see what you think.
Ben's working translation of the second hymn is below the fold.
Hymn to the Night â…¡Does the Morning always have to return?
Will the obligations of everyday life never stop?
Troublesome activity undermines the heavenly passage of Night.
Won’t the secret offering of love ever burn for ever?
Light’s time was measured out, but the power of the Night is timeless and
boundless.
Holy Sleep, gladden not too seldom the Night’s servant in everyday work.
The span of sleep is endless.
Only fools misunderstand you and know of no sleep except that shadow that
in the half-light of genuine sleep you softly throw over us.
They aren’t aware of you in the nectar of the golden grape, in the almond
tree’s marvelous oil, and in the brown juice of the poppy.
They don’t know you are that which lingers around the bosom of the tender
maiden and makes a heaven in her lap; they have no idea that you open
a path to Heaven from the Old Stories, and that you carry the key to the
dwellings of the blessed,
O, silent bringer of endless secrets.
↻...done
posted evening of July 29th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Hymns to the Night
|  |
|
One of my very favorite qualities of the Nielsen Hayden blog Making Light, is the way commenters there freely rewrite classic poetry in new voices and on new subjects. It is a highly literate crowd over there -- today they have been (spinning off of an exchange between Chris Clarke and Abi Sutherland at Google+) rewriting the greats to have reference to the world of blogging and newsgroups and social networks. Thomas speaks through Henry Reed: Today we have naming of trolls. Yesterday
we had spam deletion. And tomorrow morning
We shall have what to do after banning. But today
Today we have naming of trolls. Economies
Totter world-wide toward bankruptcy
But today we have naming of trolls.
(And on the subject of Making Light: at the bottom of a week-old thread, a troll has inspired commenters to translate old favorites into Chinese via Google, with some fun results.)
posted evening of July 29th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Readings
|  |
|
Here are two concerts Ellen and I are planning to go to: -
The Shirts will be playing at Cha Chas on the Coney Island boardwalk on Saturday the 13th. There will be three bands, The Shirts are leading off at 8pm. Should be a great show.
- Robyn Hitchcock is playing Eye at The Bell House on November 19th. Also on the bill are John Wesley Harding and the Minus Five.
Meet up with us! It will be fun.
posted evening of July 29th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Music
|  |
Tuesday, July 26th, 2011
Timothy Burke's blog dropped off my radar a couple of years ago... Today I happened back onto it by way of Russell Arben Fox -- I'm making it a regular stop on my politics reading list from now on, based just on the two topmost posts at the moment -- one of the most scathing bits of criticism of President Obama I've read yet, one that really articulates the disappointment I feel at his term in office; and a bedtime story for the Republicans in congress who are hell-bent on destroying our nation in service of an incomplete, ill-considered analogy of the national economy to a family's budget.
posted evening of July 26th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Politics
| |
|
 Last week, Sylvia finished up a bicycle repair class she's been taking at summer camp. Today, Tom Reingold, who taught the class, invited her over for a lesson in wheel-truing -- the last step to getting her new bike ridable. It is a blue Jamis Ranger of recent vintage which Tom found in his ramblings in need of lubrication and tuning-up, and a new seat. And it's all done! Sylvia took her first ride on it this evening.
I'm impressed -- I must have been 14 or 15 before I did a full tune-up on a bike. Click through for more pictures of the bike repair.
posted evening of July 26th, 2011: 3 responses
➳ More posts about Sylvia
| |
Sunday, July 24th, 2011
At The Hooded Utilitarian, the first posts have gone up in the new Illustrated Wallace Stevens roundtable, which will be ongoing over the next few weeks. Up first is Mahendra Singh's take on the totally seasonally appropriate Cuban Doctor. (Singh styles himself "An illustrator busily fitting Lewis Carroll into a protosurrealist straitjacket with matching dada cufflinks.")
posted morning of July 24th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Comix
|  |
Tuesday, July 19th, 2011
Franklin Einspruch of The Hooded Utilitarian brings to our attention the abstract expressionist work of Walter Darby Bannard and in particular, his riffs on George Herriman's comix.
posted evening of July 19th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Pretty Pictures
| |
|
So I am reading some of the pieces in this edition of Two Lines (the one I mentioned yesterday) and it is making me feel very good to be included in this crowd. The quality of selections and of translation is just off the charts. And rereading my piece in this context, I honestly think it holds up, that it is of a like quality to the rest of the anthology. (Although almost the first thing I noticed was a problem of tense, a sentence that would have sounded much better with the addition of the word "had". Oh well, too late for revisions.)
- Chris Andrews' translation of the opening of Varamo, by César Aira, had me laughing out loud on the train this morning, underlining passages ("the sequence was dense with meaning, but threatened from within by the infinite"! "the innocent look of an incoherent letter"! "Light dissolved the worries created by its dark twin, thought"!) and longing to read the whole thing.
- Joanne Turnbull's translation of The Letter Killers, by Sigizmund Krzhinzhanovsky, again makes me want to read the whole book. The inklings of asemia contained in Krzhinzhanovsky's protagonist's method of composition have me dying to know where he goes from here.
- Andrew Oakland translates Martin Reiner's meditation on "The Angel of Destruction" -- the Warsaw Pact troops entering Brno when Reiner was 4 years old, in kindergarten. Extremely powerful and, as Oakland asserts in his translator's note, it does not require much familiarity with Czech history to get the point.
- Harry Thomas and Marco Sonzogni translate two poems by Primo Levi which have me wondering how come I have not read any Levi yet.
posted evening of July 19th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Translation
| |
Monday, July 18th, 2011
 My copy of the forthcoming issue of Two Lines -- journal of the Center for the Art of Translation -- arrived in today's mail. A nice feeling to see my name there; my translation of the first chapter of The Art of Resurrection is my first contribution to Two Lines, hopefully there will be more to come.
And -- well, this seems like some kind of sign to me, to me who is always looking for portents: The editor's note from Luc Sante mentions in its second sentence "the late Kenneth Koch, one of my greatest teachers" -- so soon after I'd been thinking about Koch in the context of translation...
posted evening of July 18th, 2011: 4 responses
➳ More posts about Writing Projects
| |
|
La pareja sentada en el vagón del tren soltaba risitas y hablaba francés, discutÃa de lo que miraba en la pantalla del iPhone de la mujer. El hombre era alto y delgado, llevaba traje y corbata, y yo estaba mirando un poco divertido su nuez grande. Me preguntaba de qué hablaban, y me preguntaba si alcanzarÃa Penn Station a tiempo para tomar el tren a la casa. Su cuello largo estaba estirado mientras buscaba la pantalla pequeña que su amiga tenÃa en el regazo.
posted evening of July 18th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Projects
| Previous posts
Archives  | |
|
Drop me a line! or, sign my Guestbook.
•
Check out Ellen's writing at Patch.com.
| |
