Last December The Times published an article about an exhibition at Columbia University’s Wallach Art Gallery, titled “Partisans of the Nude: An Arab Art Genre in an Era of Contest, 1920-1960.”
The show spotlights 85 rarely seen works in the nude genre, including paintings, sculptures and drawings created after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, as Arabs transitioned from living under British and French rule to independence. The exhibition raises several questions: What is considered nude art? Who gets to create it? And what does it mean to be Arab? (Sara Aridi, “Spotlighting the Body in a Nascent Arab Art World,” New York Times, 12-14-23)
I was especially taken by the following painting:
Hamed Abdalla, “Al-Haml (Pregnancy),” 1959,… At the Wallach Art Gallery. Credit… via Dar Abdalla. [New York Times caption and illustration]
Things need to work themselves out.A round of unkinking is due.Mistakes were made. Put a few fires out. Make nice again.Fast backward to the good times.Park the ordnance. Cool your jets. The killing, the killing, give it a rest! LOLBled … Continue reading →
Claire Merchlinsky [New York Times caption and illustration]
Over her 38-year career at The Times, Ms. Smith cultivated a reputation for intimate observations conveyed in accessible prose.
I became a critic in the same way a lot of people become critics: by immersing themselves in a subject and having enough confidence to listen to their opinions. Criticism isn’t really an academic subject. I don’t think it can be taught at school; it’s much more visceral. It happens when you’re in front of art, examining it, articulating opinions and trying to convert those opinions into clear prose.
I had never taken a journalism course. Editors and copy editors — especially at The Times — were my real teachers.
Critics need to be more flexible than artists. You have to be open to being changed and pushed into new directions by art. I don’t feel an obligation to take a strong stand on things.
(Sarah Bahr, “Roberta Smith Looks Back on Three Decades of Art Criticism,” New York Times, 4-11-24)
It’s possible to attribute eccentric form to lineated discourse that’s unscannable. Discard capitalization, italics and punctuation. What’s left is line. Lines have their element, like a fish its water, in white space aka page space. The writer commandeers spacing as a tool with which to impinge upon the reader’s faculty for apprehending utterance.
The manner in which words occupy their space is a force multiplier. Features such as indentation, word and letter hyper-gapping, and geminative CRLFs arguably boost signal.
Danielle Vogel, “Drifts,” Poetry, March 2024 (continued).
One infers a dynamic of phrasing, a chafing of lexicon, a flexing of syntax conjured in the writer’s mind, to which conformation the writer constrains the spill of printed text over, across, down and around the page. All aspects of two dimensions figure, including the upside down.
Danielle Vogel, “Drifts,” Poetry, March 2024 (end).
Bespoke word placement on the typeset plane groups, isolates, steers, focuses, creates cleavage, clash, attraction of reference and connotation. The text is more than the sum of its particles and lexemes; read but also viewed. To cite such text one best photographs it, or else sketches it cursively. It’s an uttered image, a laidout revelation, a verbal spectacle.
Aggressive space allocation confers an authorial bossiness on the text. One infers that the writer is at special pains to manage the flow of thought and emotion sought to be conveyed.
One infers that the writer has plumbed private intuition in order to instantiate a one-off, typographical form factor suited for optimal expression of a distinctly personal, or universally resonant, noteworthy, communicable psychic event.
Hakuin Ekaku’s masterpiece, “Giant Daruma,” 18th century, which depicts the glowering visage of the Indian monk remembered in Japan as the founding patriarch of what became Zen, wears its Zen ideas lightly. Credit… The Gitter-Yelen Collection. [New York Times caption and illustration]
The thin, gray quality of the old man’s face suggest [sic] that even a Zen master’s identity is evanescent, while the dark intensity of his eyes captures the timeless persistence of his understanding. A series of feathery, beautiful strokes come together at the bottom to form a beard, making the off-white paper look whiter where it flashes between them. Daruma just appears out of nowhere, as if he were always there. (Will Heinrich, “In Zen Painting, It Takes Years of Practice to Do Almost Nothing,” New York Times, 4-6-24)
Think what you will about copyedit lapses, the article is interesting in what it says about Zen painting. It points out how “letting go of the impulse to fill in interesting details” contributes to making pictures that aren’t fussy and overwrought. Be still, my bumbling brush.
Shopify helps you do your thing however you chi-ching.
Mollify. Fortify. Qualify. Beautify. Ossify. The ‘-fy’ pattern is a fertile template for neologisms associated with chi-chinging. “Shopify” is a platform, an ambience, a tool suite, a code base, a launchpad, whatever; what matters is it aids thing-doing in the service of chi-chinging. That much the slogan delivers.
However…
You should know the Caped Grammarian’s side hack is commercial prosody. When a jingle or slogan is prey to an impending ictus tragedy, the CG heeds the call and rides.
The second line of “Shopify helps you do your thing” flashes a gape where an iamb should be. Imagine Kim Kardashian evincing her signature smile only to broadcast a missing incisor. Painful.
Here’s one way to cure the defect:
Shopify helps you do your thing however you chance to chi-ching.
“Chance” is stretchy. It has floutiness on its side — when in doubt, flout — yet gives pause. Rule of thumb for inventing sticky drivel: If something gives pause, fix it. You won’t get less bothered by telling yourself the discord’s a feature, not a bug. Don’t lipstick the pig; stab it in the neck.
Here’s a second option:
Shopify helps you do your thing however you choose to chi-ching.
Nailed it. “Choose” is tame but right. The art of the jingle is knowing when the predictable’s clash with the inevitable yields the serviceable.
You’re welcome, Shopify. May the profit be with you.
For me, a learning translation (which may lead later to an “artistic” one) starts with inserting English phraseology that tracks the Arabic as closely as possible. This creates a “trot” that mirrors the source’s structures. The goal is to understand how the Arabic text is functioning and to retain vocabulary. Repetitive chanting of the verse and its component phrases affords practice making the Arabic sounds and hearing the verse. (Where oh where are the modern rhapsodes — the Gérard Philipes — of Arabic poetry who can provide studied recitations of the classical works, actualizing their vaunted aural dimension for the student’s thirsting ear? I’ve searched for and have yet to find useful recordings.)
1 ḏāda [drove away] ^an muqlaẗ(ī) [from my eye] laḏīḏ(a)-l-manām(i) [the sweet of the sleep] šuḡl(u)-ha ^an-hu [its distraction from it] bi-d-dumū^(i)-s-sijām(i) [with the tears the pouring forth]
In the phrase šuḡl(u)-ha ^an-hu “its distraction from it,” gendered pronouns show that “its” refers to feminine “eye,” and “it” to masculine “sleep”: “its (my eye’s) distraction from it (sleep).”
The subject of the verb “drove away” is the noun šuḡl(u), “distraction.”
The prepositional phrase bi-d-dumū^(i)-s-sijām(i) “with the tears pouring forth” qualifies the distraction as to its motivation.
Two nouns are defined by the article: l-manām(i) “the sleep” and d-dumū^(i) “the tears.” In the phrase laḏīḏ(a)-l-manām(i) “the sweet of the sleep,” the adjective behaves as a noun, including accusative inflection as comports with its status as direct object of “drove away.”
Here’s my translation:
There drove away from my eye the sweetness of sleep its distraction from it, what with tears pouring forth.
Using the dummy subject “There” to accommodate delayed occurrence of the true subject “distraction” lets me maintain the Arabic word order. I insert a comma pause to help the reader absorb the shock of violent but licit English word order. As a translation it’s compromised and dissonant, especially when read without benefit of analysis. I’ll leave it in this state, however, since it accomplishes what I want: understanding and retention.
Here, for comparison, is Arberry’s paraphrase built on passive voice and unspooling the Arabic word order in the service of prettier English:
Sweet sleep has been barred from my eyes by their preoccupation with copious tears. (p. 62)
Source A.J. Arberry, Arabic Poetry: A Primer for Students, Cambridge University Press, 1965. The poem is selection 10 by ^Alī ibn al-^Abbās ibn ar-Rūmī (836-896 AD)… Apparently of Byzantine descent (on which account some modern Arab critics have found Greek elements in his style), was born in Baghdad where he passed most of his life as panegyrist and lampoonist. His descriptive verse is highly appreciated. (From Arberry’s Biographical Notes)
Ms. Kenneally’s photographs straddled the line between glamour and destruction but also showcased a community’s pride in survival. [New York Times caption and illustration]
When I was there, I walked the streets with Denia Nealy, an artist who goes by Czar, and my friend Brenda Ann Kenneally, a photographer and writer, who would shout names, and people would instantly emerge. A stranger offered a handful of Tater Tots to Czar and me in a gesture that felt emblematic: Of course a complete stranger on an electric unicycle would cruise by and share nourishment. I was given a butterfly on a stick, which I carried around like a magic wand because that seemed appropriate and necessary. I was told that if I saw a screaming woman walking down the street with a shiv in her hand, not to worry and not to make eye contact and she’d leave me alone; it was just Stabby. There was talk of the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on the beach, the weekly church sermon led by Jack the preacher (who is also a plumber), a potluck lasagna gathering.
(Jaime Lowe, “The Secret to Surviving Climate Apocalypse,” New York Times, 3-29-24)
Sometimes a stand and a stance visually rhyme. Brenda Ann Kenneally’s radiates brawny pluck in the shit’s maw.
I like its silky feel against my skin. It gets me through the days when Fury, Fear and Grief are signing autographs. Of course a quality of underthings is they need airing. That’s what I came here to say.
EthicalDative 