On Mistranslation

Posted on July 29, 2018 by JMN
Linda Huang. NYTimes.

Linda Huang. NYTimes.

When Jerome, the patron saint of translators, rendered the Bible into Latin, he introduced a pun that created one of the most potent symbols of Christian iconography, turning the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (“malus”) into the tree of apples (“malum”). It’s true that “malum,” in Jerome’s day, could mean any number of fruits: the serpentine creature on Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling, for instance, is coiled around a fig tree. But in the 16th century, both Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach the Elder, following Jerome’s lead, famously depicted Adam and Eve beside unambiguous apples. And when, the following century, John Milton wrote of Eve’s “sharp desire … / Of tasting those fair Apples,” he helped concretize the image of the bright rubine Malus pumila that we know today.
[Mark Polizzotti, “Why Mistranslation Matters,” NYTimes]

Copyright (c) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.

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“Tibi Dabo”

Posted on July 28, 2018 by JMN

“… et ait ei tibi dabo potestatem hanc universam et gloriam illorum quia mihi tradita sunt et cui volo do illa.” Copyright (c) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.

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Thank you, and “I Could Eat Your Words”

Posted on July 28, 2018 by JMN

Check out this video on YouTube:

Thank you to my precious, patient readers who spend a moment of their invaluable time to look my way here on EthidalDative. I can only strive to repay the compliment.

And although I try not to encumber you with irreflexive boosterism, I can’t stifle an endorsement of Patricia Barber’s singing and musicianship. I listen to music for much of my day — I don’t always *hear* it as I’m doing other things, but it it strikes the right note I do. Barber has a dusky, lower-pitched voice, like Diana Krall, and her renditions are unfailingly, often startingly, arresting, lyrical, head-turning. I never tire of hearing her, and I tire easily of certain music. I cite her lyrics to the song “I Could Eat Your Words” below. It’s from her album entitled “Verse.” The song presses all kinds of buttons on a linguist.

“I Could Eat Your Words” (lyric by Patricia Barber)

philosophy engenders a Rational man

Descartes would be the first to agree

syllogistically speaking if ‘A’ is you

and ‘B’ is me

logical proposition will lead us to’C’

Aristotle conditioned the Greeks to indulge

the brain and the body agree

psychologically speaking if the student can teach,

the teacher can learn,

lets leave the thinking to me

simplicity can charm the intellectual beast

a three-word phrase will suffice

hedonistically speaking if ‘food is for thought’

then ‘thought is or food,’ and

teacher, “I want you” tonight

i could eat your words

suck the salt from your ‘erudition’

light a fire under ‘inhibition’

season ‘reason’ with a transitive verb

i could eat your mind

sweeten ‘no’ with ‘equivocation’

blend your phrases with ‘provocation’

sip the spit from your bittersweet rhyme

poets need a holiday

professors need adulation

you can talk and talk

the right away

and make no case for ‘moderation’

i’ll drink ‘remorse’ like a cabernet

champagne with ‘indecision’

‘guilt’ like garlic

needs to sauté with cream, butter

and wine

I could eat your words

melt ‘objection’ with ‘stimulation’

simmer ‘truth’ with ‘prevarication’

taste your ‘virtue’ and ‘honor’ and ‘time’

baby teach me tonight

Copyright (c) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.

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LinkedIn Just Gave You a New Reason to Make Fun of LinkedIn

Posted on July 28, 2018 by JMN

LinkedIn, a social network for people who enjoy soul-crushing banality, knows you get more than a few emails from randos wanting to add you to their “professional network.” Sick of reading messages from these random acquaintances looking to discuss synergy-based solutions and B2B services? Well, now you can listen to them instead, thanks to voice messaging, the newest feature being added to LinkedIn’s iOS and Android app.

— Read on gizmodo.com/linkedin-just-gave-you-a-new-reason-to-make-fun-of-link-1827935162

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“Los meros meros” again

Posted on July 28, 2018 by JMN

Guillermo Chapa was a member of the culture I was assigned to teach Spanish at as a rookie assistant-prof at Pan Am-Brownsville. I said teach “at” instead of “to” because almost all my students already knew the language — I had little to teach them there. The courses I was charged with were abstruse (“comparative-constrastive Spanish-English phonetics and phonology”) and cultural. I knew a lot about the formalities of Spanish and some of its literature. Guillermo knew a lot about the realities of being Hispanic in Texas. We hit it off.

I went with Guillermo and his friends to see a Mexican movie across the border in Matamoros. I can’t remember the title. At one point the screen filled with quietly intimidating men exhibiting distinctly Native-American gravitas and wearing imposing hats. “There they are,” I heard Guillermo murmur reverently, “Los meros meros.”

The Mexicanism and how he said it stayed with me: “Los meros meros.” Without delving too deeply I took it then and take it now to mean something like: The men you don’t want to mess with, who will remain dormant and benign until and unless their community needs them; the backbone of their society, rooted in Pre-Columbian times, icons of long-suffering durability.

That’s just an approximation of what the cinematic image and Guillermo’s comment meant for me at the time. The term “mero” is cognate with English “mere,” but the two terms parted company in this Mexican idiom. There’s nothing “mere” about Los Meros.

Copyright (c) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.

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Los Meros Meros

Posted on July 27, 2018 by JMN

Check out this video on YouTube:

I love this video. It makes me grin and tap my foot.

Current Stats for Future Reference (2018)

Decline in city’s median age last 7 years: 36.4 to 35.8.

Hispanic population of county: 47% (of est. 92,000 total).

(Hispanic rise is “natural increase,” births minus deaths.)

Non-Hispanic white population of county: 45%.

Date Hispanic population became county’s largest: 2015.

Date Hispanic population projected to be statewide largest: 2022.

Hispanic student population in ISD: 65%.

Minority student population in ISD: 75%.

Hispanic membership ISD Board of Trustees: 33% (2 of 6).

Hispanic membership County Commissioners Court: 20% (1 of 5).

Hispanic membership City Council: 29% (2 of 7).

(Source: Victoria Advocate, citing “Latest release from U.S. Census.”)

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The Road of Paint: Zadie Smith, “Henry Taylor’s Promiscuous Painting,” New Yorker, July 30, 2018 issue

Posted on July 26, 2018 by JMN
Henry Taylor “Cicely and Miles Visit the Obamas,” from 2017, shows Taylor_s spatial, tonal genius.Courtesy the artist and Blum & Poe

Henry Taylor “Cicely and Miles Visit the Obamas,” from 2017, shows Taylor’s spatial, tonal genius. Courtesy the artist and Blum & Poe

[Henry Taylor’s paintings are transfixing for me. I’m infinity shy of his league as a painter, but I was touched by the “road of chaos… road of paint” phrase that Zadie Smith uses to name the path that Taylor has taken. (This wonderful article has also brought me my first encounter with the adverbialization of “synecdoche.”) For me, trying to paint is as necessary as it is fraught with anguish. I’m guessing crochet might be more relaxing!]

Horses, in Taylor’s work, appear sometimes as a symbol of freedom and power and sometimes as an expression of the opposite: power restrained, power trapped and fenced in.
…
The artist who once, back at Camarillo State Mental Hospital, painted a suffering patient synecdochically, with a screaming mouth for a head, could have easily become a commercial artist, using the part to represent the whole, pitching and selling on either side of the horizontal line that bisects so many of his canvases. He could have been a maker of icons and iconography, like Warhol, who made a Campbell’s soup can a metaphor for capitalism and made repetition itself a metaphor for fame. Instead, Taylor has chosen the road of chaos—that is, the road of paint.

Henry Taylor “Man on Horseback in Naples, TX,” from 2015.Courtesy the artist and Blum & Poe

Henry Taylor “Man on Horseback in Naples, TX,” from 2015. Courtesy the artist and Blum & Poe

Henry Taylor “Screaming Head,” from 1990. Courtesy the artist and Blum & Poe

Henry Taylor “Screaming Head,” from 1990. Courtesy the artist and Blum & Poe

(Zadie Smith, “Henry Taylor’s Promiscuous Painting,” New Yorker, July 30, 2018 issue)

Copyright (c) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged | 8 Comments

Overheard in the Teachers’ Lounge

Posted on July 25, 2018 by JMN
Casa Josh

Casa Josh

One of our football coaches, a vet in his forties, recounted how his wife ribbed him about being a neat freak. “Your underwear drawer is relentlessly organized, your t-shirts are folded, your Levis are on hangers!” she would exclaim. His reply to her was, “I’m not a neat freak. I’m a Marine.”

Not one to hobnob much with coaching staff, I nevertheless mentally genuflected anew to this man — for his service to country, of course, but in addition for his neatness. I had more in common with him than I realized. I flunked the Army physical because of a heart murmur, so was disqualified from military service. However, I am a neat freak manqué. I express my solidarity with The Few, The Proud: Semper Organized!

Casa Joseph

Casa Joseph

Casa Daniel

Casa Daniel

(Copyright (c) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

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Dear Mother… I also finished

Posted on July 25, 2018 by JMN
Acting! JMN, photo.

Acting! JMN, photo.

I also finished the “Teacher in America” book and loaned it to Charles last night. Herbert, Charles and I had lunch last week and I mentioned the book to them. Herbert knew of Barzun, said he had read several of his books on music and the arts. Apparently the current director of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), described by Herbert as “a Reagan goon,” is trying to cut back on funding for various programs, as well as institute “testing” of some kind to measure the results of artists’ interaction with children. Barzun has a wonderful chapter about that sort of thing: the American obsession with “facts,” as opposed to ideas, and with tangible, measurable “results.” He has plenty to abominate about the “educationists” (not his term, but I think he would approve of it) and the regimen of “testing” that they have perpetrated on the schools.

I’m thinking of picking up a book we have. It’s entitled “Mark Twain: God’s Fool” by Hamlin Hill. Have you heard of it? Here’s a pertinent quote from my little writer’s book: “On the trail of another man, the biographer must put up with finding himself at every turn: any biography uneasily shelters an autobiography within it.” (Paul Murray Kendall)

Here’s another one I like: “Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author because I want to ask questions. If I had answers I’d be a politician.” (Eugene Ionesco)

I’m sorry you had to postpone your play. Isn’t it sad that gymnasiums replaced auditoriums in our great rural vastnesses? How is Hubbard’s library? I remember your bitterness over the lack of one when growing up. You describe Groesbeck as progressive. I’d love to see it. Hope you tap into some of the other play groups.

[Correspondence, 1987, Copyright (c) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.]

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Finger Hut Follies

Posted on July 25, 2018 by JMN
Sugar Shack, JMN, photo.

Sugar Shack, JMN, photo.

Mimsy and Chance Lafarge went to Cloudburst for the weekend to celebrate their tenth anniversary. Drove up in two cars with Dandi and Mitch Oddbocker and Shay and Rafe Bickford. Planned to split up on Saturday so Mimsy, Dandi, and Shay could do girl stuff, and Chance, Mitch, and Rafe could do guy stuff. They’d all meet back at the hotel for beers before dinner.

On Sunday the guys would play golf. The girls would shop and go to a club called The Stirrup to see the male strippers. They’d all meet back at the hotel for beers before dinner.

Friday night Mimsy gets a call from the Finger Hut back home. Her youngest son Cisco, it turns out, has phoned in an order for sixteen deluxe pork finger baskets. It was to feed the junior varsity, he told them. Mimsy said, “You didn’t fill the order, did you?” Posie the manager said, “Yes, I did, but the credit card number Cisco gave me is invalid.”

Mimsy said a cuss word to herself, she told me, wondering why they didn’t run the dang card before they cooked the food. Anyway, she paid with her card, then called Shyanne to go pick up her brother’s food and tell the team to eat it on the patio, not inside.

Well, Shyanne drove into town and got the food, but bless her heart, she didn’t close the tailgate of her doolie before she drove back. All those dinners blew out on the highway without her knowing it. For near a hundred dollars nobody but the varmints got fed.

Mimsy and Chance read Cisco the riot act when they got back. The “credit card number” he gave the Finger Hut was the serial number on his Gameboy, which happens to have sixteen digits. Cisco claimed it had been Rodeo Peavey’s idea, as if that mattered. These young’uns! If they had half a brain between ’em they’d be dangerous.

(Stag Country, Copyright (c) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)

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