EthicalDative

Slant-Wise Talk

Posted on June 25, 2021 by JMN

*The poet Stephen Dunn in 1999. He specialized in poems about surviving, coping with and looking for meaning in the ordinary passages of life. Credit…Bernard Meyers*. [NYTimes caption]

Saying things that are graspably cockeyed is my kind of self-expression. Doing so skirts peekaboo obscurity and affectation constantly, but sometimes it feels like it’s working and those moments make me feel interesting.

“Even your most serious problem,” [Stephen Dunn] said, “very few people are going to be interested in unless you yourself, in the act of writing the poem, make some discoveries about it.”

I like knowing that Stephen Dunn’s three major influences were Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens and Theodore Roethke. Two of those have been mine.

“In a nutshell, Frost for his strategies of composition and his quotidian yet philosophical investigations,” Mr. Dunn wrote. “Stevens for teaching me that, if the music was right, I could love poems I didn’t understand. Roethke for his sensual playfulness, but finally for his lyrical meditations, and his phrasing; yes, Roethke most of all.”

Stephen Dunn, aging lover of basketball, wrote this:

… your legs hanging from your waist
like misplaced sloths in a country
known for its cheetahs and its sunsets.

And this, on turning 60 in 1999:

The millennium,
my dear, is sure to disappoint us.
I think I’ll keep on describing things
to ensure that they really happened.

(Neil Genzlinger, “Stephen Dunn, Poet Who Celebrated the Ordinary, Dies at 82,” NYTimes, 6-25-21)

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged language, personal, poetry, rhetoric, style, writing | Leave a comment

¡Salve, Profesor!

Posted on June 24, 2021 by JMN

I connected me and a dot out of the blue last night. A bouncy man I remember only as “Dr. Rubio” who taught the Latin class of my cohort at the University of Barcelona cropped up in a scholarly note:

En la compulsación del texto de la primera edición me han ayudado don Gabriel Oliver y don Francisco Rico Manrique; para la interpretación de los versos latinos de los capítulos XI y XXXVI he recurrido a la valiosa ayuda de los profesores don Lisardo Rubio, don Sebastián Mariner y don Juan Bastardas. A todos ellos mi cordial agradecimiento.
(Martín de Riquer, “Miguel de Cervantes, Obras Completas, I, Don Quijote de la Mancha, seguido del Quijote de Avellaneda, Edición, introducción y notas de Martín de Riquer, Editorial Planeta, Barcelona, 1962, pág. CI)

“In the collation of the text of the first edition [of the Avellaneda “Quijote”] don Gabriel Oliver and don Francisco Rico Manrique have assisted me; for the interpretation of the Latin verses of chapters XI and XXXVI I’ve had recourse to the invaluable assistance of professors don Lisardo Rubio, don Sebastián Mariner and don Juan Bastardas. My cordial thanks to all of them.” (My translation)

Lisardo Rubio Fernández, redoubtable Latinist, lived from 1915 to 2006. He was born in Narayola, district of Camponaraya, in El Bierzo, province of León. He held the chair of Latin philology at the University of Barcelona and afterwards at the Complutense University of Madrid until retiring in 1985. Eminent among his translations are “The Golden Ass” of Apuleius and “The Satyricon” of Petronius. (Wikipedia)

¡Salve, Doctor! Much respect from the sole gringo in your class. Descanse en paz.

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged language, Latin, personal, Spanish-English, translation | Leave a comment

On Edges and Errors

Posted on June 23, 2021 by JMN

*Cézanne’s “Still Life with Carafe, Bottle, and Fruit,” from 1906. Thingness magnetized the artist. Art work courtesy the Henry and Rose Pearlman Collection / Art Resource, NY.* [New Yorker caption]

Two descriptions in this article about Cézanne are helpful for me.

One concerns Camille Pissarro’s treatment of edges:

Pissarro was the subtlest of the leading Impressionists, devising ways of giving distinctive presence to each part of a painting, by, for example, defining the edges of objects with the paint that surrounded them. For him, an edge was a place where paint didn’t stop but only changed color.

This supports a leeriness I picked up somewhere at using hard outlining in painting — no more defensible a stance, of course, than any other hideboundedness respecting style or technique.

The second concerns Cézanne’s approach to drawing:

Cézanne was fearless of error. You see that in his figure drawings from sculpture. If a contour isn’t quite right, he doesn’t correct it (the one drafting tool that he seems never to have employed is the eraser): he multiplies it, with lines on top of lines. (There’s accuracy in there somewhere.)

The approach woos me away from some of the terror of error in drawing, though I’m led to wonder if “accuracy” is precisely, or all of, what Cézanne strove for. (?)

(Peter Schjeldahl, “My Struggle With Cézanne,” The New Yorker, 6-21-21)

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged art, Cézanne, drawing, language, painting, style | 1 Comment

Corrigendum and Addendum

Posted on June 22, 2021 by JMN

Image from theguardian.com in an article about the Chinese translation of “Don Quijote.”

Referencing https://ethicaldative.com/2021/06/20/the-quixote-funny-and-sad, in translating Martín de Riquer’s phrase “… Una diatriba para acabar con algo que hace mucho que se acabó…” I left out “hace mucho.” I should have written: “… A diatribe devoted to ending something which ended long ago…”

If Riquer had written hacía mucho, the translation would change to: “… A diatribe devoted to ending something which “had ended long ago…”

The pluperfect highlights a key point: Don Quijote is an anachronism in his own time. Everything about the crackpot knight on his shambling nag (rocín) is perceived by those he encounters as archaic. He exudes a whiff of olden times which are remote from their contemporary, 17th-century lives.

Cervantes legitimized writing that was meant to entertain, rather than instruct and edify. His beef with the stories that drove Alonso Quijano off the rails was that they were wretchedly told. He blew them out of the water with a new way of telling well nigh invented by him on the fly.

Posted in Anthology, Quotations | Tagged Cervantes, Don Quijote, language, literature, Spanish, Spanish-English, translation | Leave a comment

The Quixote: Funny and Sad

Posted on June 20, 2021 by JMN

Lo extraordinario del “Quijote” es que es una parodia que interesa al que desconoce lo parodiado, un libro con una circunstancia muy concreta que llega a los más alejados en el tiempo y el espacio, una diatriba para acabar con algo que hace mucho que se acabó, y que cada día nos abre mayores perspectivas y posibilidades de reflexión y de auténtico regocijo, pues el que no se da cuenta que el “Quijote” es un libro divertido lo ha entendido tan poco como el que no ha reparado en su tristeza.
(Martín de Riquer, “Miguel de Cervantes, Obras Completas, I, Don Quijote de la Mancha, seguido del Quijote de Avellaneda, Edición, introducción y notas de Martín de Riquer, Editorial Planeta, Barcelona, 1962)

The extraordinary thing about the “Quixote” is that it’s a parody of interest even to the person who is unfamiliar with what’s parodied, a book with a very concrete circumstance which yet reaches those most removed in time and space, a diatribe devoted to ending something which is ended, and which each day opens up to us greater perspectives and possibilities for reflection and genuine pleasure, for (indeed) the person who doesn’t realize that the “Quixote” is an entertaining book has grasped it as poorly as the person who hasn’t noticed its sadness. (My translation)

[Alba, I misspoke when I told you this would give you a glimpse of Cervantes’s 17th-century Spanish. That quotation is for another day. This is 20th-century scholar Martín de Riquer reflecting on the work in the introduction to his edition. Jaime]

Posted in Anthology, Quotations | Tagged Cervantes, Don Quixote, language, literature, Spanish, Spanish-English, translation | 1 Comment

Robert Hollander: Scholar-Translator

Posted on June 19, 2021 by JMN

Robert Hollander with his wife, Jean Hollander, in his Princeton University office in 2001. On the desk is their translation of “Inferno,” the first volume of Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” In the foreground is a bust of the writer to whom Professor Hollander devoted much of his life. Credit… Laura Pedrick.

Robert Hollander, Princeton Dante scholar and translator, died in April, 2021. The translation of “The Divine Comedy” which he produced in close collaboration with wife Jean Hollander (d. 2019), herself a poet, is said to be among the “smoothest” and most accessible of the English versions.

Jean Hollander provided the spark for the translation project in 1997. Peering over her husband’s shoulder as he studied a 1939 translation of “The Divine Comedy,” she pronounced the text to be “awful.” Challenged by Mr. Hollander to do better, she returned two days later with a “free-verse rendering of the text in current English idiom.” “That’s not bad,” he said.

Their role-based collaboration is evoked in a tableau of tropical bliss:

On trips to the beach during a family vacation on the Caribbean island of Tortola, Professor Hollander would don his clip-on sunglasses, Ms. Hollander would put on a sun hat and bring a picnic — and then the two would spend all afternoon debating cantos. They adjudicated microscopically fine distinctions, like whether sinners were hurled “down” or “below.”

(Alex Traub, “Robert Hollander, Who Led Readers Into ‘The Inferno,’ Dies at 87,” NYTimes, 6-8-21)

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged Dante, Italian-English, language, literature, poetry, style, translation | Leave a comment

Travesía (13)

Posted on June 18, 2021 by JMN

*Whitman 1819 – 1892* [Image from www.allenginsberg.org]

*Fulton Ferry Boat (Brooklyn, New York), July 1890 via The Library of Congress, Washington DC.* [Image from www.allenginsberg.org]

Versión castellana del poema “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1856) de Walt Whitman
English text at http://www.poetryfoundation.org
Spanish Interpretation by JMN

[Translator’s note: This is the 9th and last part of “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” I will put it up in 4 sections.]

(9) Section 1 of 4
Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
¡Prosigue tu flujo, río! ¡Fluye con la pleamar, y bájate con la bajamar!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves!
¡Seguid vuestro jugueteo, oleaje crestado de borde festoneado!
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me!
¡Nubarrones vistosos del ocaso! ¡Empapad con vuestro esplendor a mí, o a los hombres y mujeres que me sucedan por generaciones!
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
¡Atravesad de orilla a orilla, muchedumbres incontables de pasajeros!
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn!
¡Levantaos, altos mástiles de Mannahatta! ¡Levantaos, bellas colinas de Brooklyn!
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!
¡Late, cerebro perplejo y curioso! ¡Arroja preguntas y respuestas!
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
¡Suspéndete aquí y por todas partes, eterno flotador de solución!
Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public assembly!
¡Contemplad, ojos afectuosos y anhelantes, en el domicilio o la calle o la asamblea pública!

Posted in Anthology | Tagged English-Spanish, language, poetry, translation, Walt Whitman | Leave a comment

Nazi disléxico

Posted on June 17, 2021 by JMN

Es que hay que ir al colegio, hasta para ser un nazi asqueroso.
Nazi disléxico

When graffiti misfires. A droll catch by Javier.

Posted in Commentary | Tagged graffiti, humor, language | Leave a comment

Deluged So Few nor Dampened So Many

Posted on June 15, 2021 by JMN

(Continued from https://ethicaldative.com/2021/06/14/news-of-the-incident-got-around-in-gob-circles/)

Rigging walloped the Wisp isthmus with a vengeance. Rigs to melt permafrost for pus collection. Rigs to truck scoop to reservoirs. Rigs to tanker and pipe it to spillways and railheads. Rigs to salvage grounded and derailed carriers.

Plants burgeoned like twinkling fairy cities in the night. Plants to introduce gain of function additives. Plants to process pus derivatives into plastics and personal lubricant and coffee whitener.

Support and service jobs broke out like plethoras. Jobs to do and undo, start and stop, perforate and plug, buy and sell, furnish and dispose, advise and teach, protect and serve, adjudicate and snuff. Odd jobs, hand jobs, put-up jobs. Jobs to stencil “Danger” whereall it needed to go.

Everywhere you looked there were pieces of work; both hard and soft labor found at the drop of a hat in the teeming, melt-field pus camps; temp gigs and side hustles and life hacks galore in the honkytonks and greasy spoons that bloomed like venus flytraps along the shorelines of runoff lagoons.

Just how and whether Todd’s ancestor Astrid issued from this rowdy mileu remains to be seen. What’s important to remember here is that there are more plausibilities than the deniable kind, no matter how lustily Texas governors assert the contrary. Let’s put a pin in it there.

Posted in Anthology | Tagged Branded Figments, humor, satire | 1 Comment

News of the Incident Got Around in GOB Circles

Posted on June 14, 2021 by JMN

(Continued from https://ethicaldative.com/2021/06/13/smegma-boom-of-the-2020s-in-the-wisp-isthmus/)

Scientists converged on Exit 186 to examine the fluid that had preserved Fred’s effaced face. It turned out to be a highly extrapolated sublimate of West Texas light sweet crude. A massive tectonic blister of the stuff extended from the Wisp isthmus all the way down to the Mar-a-Lago Trench.

The indigenous word for the fluid was ñiññ, meaning “earth pus.” In Wisp folk medicine it was reputed to be a balm for anal afflatus.

The Department of Wasteland Security reclassified the Wisp protectorate as a national park. This opened it up to intensive melting for earth pus extraction. Exxon-Roxxoff stranded expectant tankers in the Wisp shoals and started a ruptured pipeline to spill product on serial compass points radiating southward.

A device pioneered in labs of the desert converted to CO2 the waste oxygen spewed by earth pus combustion. This removed the last impediment to ruthless monetizing of the miracle goo. It was Katy bar the door — a Klondike level of churn paired with a Niagara of trickle. Not since OPEC times has such untaxed wealth deluged so few nor dampened so many.

Posted in Anthology | Tagged Branded Figments, humor, satire | 1 Comment