writing is sorrow; having had written is sublime
For many people art means rose-coloured windows, and selection means picking a bouquet for Mrs. Grundy. They will tell you glibly that artistic considerations have nothing to do with the disagreeable, with the ugly; they will rattle off shallow commonplaces about the province of art and the limits of art, till you are moved to some wonder in return as to the province and the limits of ignorance.
Henry James
Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgement, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?
— from The Black Cat
MORE LITERARY ZEN
#vote
Is anyone as surprised as I am that the Nobel Prize in Literature went to an old pasty white dude?
I’m mean, it’s only been four years since the last one was selected with Peter Handke, and five years before that since Patrick Modiano was selected, and three years before that since Tomas Tranströmer was selected.
Of course, Bob Dylan doesn’t count in 2016, because, well, wtf was that all about anyway?
Nor does Kazuo Ishiguro in 2017, unless you are of the mindset of the former South African apartheid government and regard those of East Asian descendancy as honorary whites.
Of course in this day and age it is treading in dangerous territory to assume the particulars of anyone’s identity, even that of assumed pasty old white dudes such as mentioned above, sans Ishiguro of course.
But I’m pretty damn confident of my assumptions.
Come to think of it, that’s a whole lot of old white dudes selected for the NPL in just a little over the past decade.
What’s up with that?
I thought, with the state of the world as it is, with global sensibilities as they are, old pasty white dudes were persona non grata when it comes to just about any form of praise or recognition.
Oui, no?
It certainly is a oui for me and I’m as old and male and pasty white as they come.
I say, to hell with old pasty white dudes, regardless of their particular talents, or lack thereof.
Can I get an amen?
I don’t know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense.
#meditate
There is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind of Hell, and in confining one’s efforts to securing a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire.
*Perhaps a better caption would be, Willem Defoe as Arthur Schopenhauer, which is why I shan’t give up my day job.
Oh yeah, my books will be free from 00:01 (PDST) tonight until 23:59 PDST) Friday.
✌️
Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell.
Okay, admittedly, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer so please take my perplexity for what it’s worth…
About a plug nickel, that’s what.
But anyway, I know it’s easy for a one-language knuklehead like me to complain, but if in “The Metamorphosis” Kafka writes that when Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams to find himself changed into an Ungeziefer, which translates into English as vermin, then why don’t translators just use the word “vermin” (or, as it also can be translated, parasite or, if in a religious context, an animal unsuitable for sacrifice, or so the web tells me, whatever) when translating the work from German to English?
I don’t know, I guess I’ll never understand smart people.
But anyway, for any of you non-Formalists out there who have no problem looking outside the text for interpretation, you can find a bit more clarity — not complete, but a bit — on what Kafka meant by the Ungeziefer that Samsa metamorphosed into from the instructions he gave to his publisher about how he did not want any representation of the creature on the book cover:
Kafka had no intention of labeling Gregor as any specific thing, but instead was trying to convey Gregor’s disgust at his transformation. In his letter to his publisher of 25 October 1915, in which he discusses his concern about the cover illustration for the first edition, Kafka does use the term Insekt, though, saying: “The insect itself is not to be drawn. It is not even to be seen from a distance.”
Wikipedia, and about a million other places on the web
And even within the text we find an affirmation of that bit of clarity when the charwoman refers to the Samsa vermin as an old dung beetle1.
So, what this all means to me is that any further classifying by a translator of Samsa the vermin beyond a generic insect is simply just the translator taking poetic license with the text, to put it nicely.
To put it un-nicely, maybe it is more likely that the translator is punching beyond their paygrade (huh?)
Or… maybe it’s just that they are trying desperately to stick out from the very large global pack of other admiring Kafka translators.
Looking at the tried and true translation of Willa and Edwin Muir, we find the sentence reading in respectfully as, “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”2
Nicely done, well within the limits of Kafka’s intent and desires I would say.
But when reading one of the newer translation of Kafka’s text by Michael Hofmann — which is what started this whole literary todo — his first sentence of “Metamorphosis” (not The Metamorphosis like it’s been referred to in English for close to a century now, but just Madison Avenue cool (or whatever the British equivalent is) Metamorphosis) reads presumptively as, “When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself changed into a monstrous cockroach (emphasis emphatically mine) in his bed.”3
A cockroach?!
No, not cool, Mr. Hofmann.
Not only do I the one-language knucklehead take umbrage with Hofmann overstepping his literary bounds, I’m sure none other than the great Mr. Nabokov would as well if he were, you know, still able to stand vertical and chase those little butterflies around.
But anyway, as I embark on a close reading of the relatively new Penguin collection of Kafka’s work as translated by Mr. Hofmann, let it be known that I have already been prejudiced against it, for whatever it’s worth…
Not much more than a plug nickel, that’s whatever.
But you already knew that.
1. FRANZ KAFKA, The Complete Stories, Schoken Books, 1971, p1274
2. Ibid, or something like that, p89
3. METAMORPHOSIS AND OTHER STORIES, Penguin Random House UK, 2007, p75
4. Yeah, it’s been several decades since I tried to correctly cite a source so cut me some slack, huh…
Yeah, so call me absurd…
Anyway, as happens with my other such favorite influential authors — Kafka, Vonnegut, Melville, Hemingway, London, Conrad… (I know, I know. This list is very male and very white… I’m working on that. I promise.) — I, like clockwork, begin jonesin’ for a Camus fix at least once a year.
Right now I’m in the midst of satisfying my most recent Camus craving by plowing through several of my perennial favorites of his — The Stranger, The Plague, and The Fall.
However, yesterday I began reading for the first time a short story collection of his called Exile and the Kingdom, and I’m saddened and a bit embarrassed to report to you that, after three stories in, I really don’t have a clue what’s going on in any of them. They, after the first read, just don’t make any sense to me. Hopefully they will after subsequent reads.
But I gotta tell ya…
#hawthorne
#peace
