On Translating Eugene Onegin

On Translating Eugene Onegin

1
What is translation? On a platter
A poet's pale and glaring head,
A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter,
And profanation of the dead.
The parasites you were so hard on
Are pardoned if I have your pardon,
O, Pushkin, for my stratagem:
I traveled down your secret stem,
And reached the root, and fed upon it;
Then, in a language newly learned,
I grew another stalk and turned
Your stanza patterned on a sonnet,
Into my honest roadside prose--
All thorn, but cousin to your rose.
2
Reflected words can only shiver
Like elongated lights that twist
In the black mirror of a river
Between the city and the mist.
Elusive Pushkin! Persevering,
I still pick up Tatiana's earring,
Still travel with your sullen rake.
I find another man's mistake,
I analyze alliterations
That grace your feasts and haunt the great
Fourth stanza of your Canto Eight.
This is my task--a poet's patience
And scholastic passion blent:
Dove-droppings on your monument.
--Vladimir Nabokov

Cleansed - Scene Eleven

Scene Eleven
The Black Room.
Robin goes into the booth that Tinker visits.
He sits.
He puts in his one and only token.

The flap opens.
The Woman is dancing.
Robin watches - at first innocently eager, then bemused, then distressed.
She dances for sixty seconds.
The flap closes.
Robin sits and cries his heart out.

Phaedra's Love - Scene Six

Priest God is merciful. He chose you.

Hippolytus Bad choice.

Priest Pray with me. Save yourself. And your country. Don't commit that sin.

Hippolytus What bothers you more, the destruction of my soul or the end of my family? I'm not in danger of committing the unforgivable sin. I already have.

Priest Don't say it.

Hippolytus Fuck God. Fuck the monarchy.

Priest Lord, look down on this man you chose, forgive his sin which comes from the intelligence you blessed him with.

Hippolytus I can't sin against a God I don't believe in.

Phaedra's Love - Scene Six

Priest Self-satisfaction is contradiction in terms.

Hippolytus I can rely on me. I never let me down.

Priest True satisfaction comes from love.

Hippolytus What when love dies? Alarm clock rings it's time to wake up, what then?

Priest Love never dies. It evolves

Hippolytus You're dangerous.

Blasted - Scene Four

Cate It's wrong to kill yourself.

Ian No. It's not.

Cate God wouldn't like it.

Ian There isn't one.

Cate How do you know?

Ian No God. No Father Christmas. No fairies. No Narnia. No fucking nothing.

Cate Got to be something.

Ian Why?

Cate Doesn't make sense otherwise.

Ian Don't be fucking stupid, doesn't make sense anyway. No reason for there to be a God just because it would be better if there was.

Cate Thought you didn't want to die.

Ian I can't see.

Cate My brother's got blind friends. You can't give up.

Ian Why not?

Cate It's weak.

Ian I know you want to punish me, trying to make me live.

Cate I don't

Ian Course you fucking do, I would. There's people I'd love to suffer but they don't, they die and that's it.

Ford Maddox Ford

The Good Soldier (350 pages)

To Do List

• Conference Paper Review
• Backoff and Probability Idle Numbers check
• Sacred Games - pg. 100
  

Álvaro Rousselot’s Journey

He booked himself into the best hotel he could find in Arromanches, a pile made of brick, stone, and wood, which creaked in the gusting wind. Tonight I will dream of Proust, he thought. Then he called Simone and talked to the old lady who looked after her child. “Madame won’t be home until after four. She has an orgy tonight,” the woman said. “A what?” Rousselot asked. The woman repeated the sentence. My God, Rousselot thought, and hung up without saying goodbye. To make things worse, that night he didn’t dream of Proust but of Buenos Aires, where thousands of Riquelmes had taken up residence in the Argentine branch of PEN, all armed with tickets to Paris, all cursing or shouting a name, the name of someone or something that Rousselot couldn’t recognize, a tongue-twister, perhaps, or a password they were trying to keep secret, although it was gnawing at their insides.

Álvaro Rousselot’s Journey

“Nothing, a girl,” Rousselot said, trying to adopt the same tone as his compatriot. Then he said a rather hurried goodbye, and as he was climbing the stairs from the quai to the street he heard the bum’s voice telling him that death was the only sure thing: “My name is Enzo Cherubini and I’m telling you that death is the only sure thing there is.” When Rousselot turned around, the bum was walking off in the opposite direction.

[Notes - It is a very interesting conflation of two images centered on one piece of utterance that's rendered twice]

Sacred Games - pg. 61

I had no use for temples, I despised incense and comfortable lies and piety, I did not believe in gods or goddesses, but here was a haven. I took off my shoes and went in. The worshipers sat cross-legged on the smooth floor, crowded together through the length of the long hall. The walls were an austere white, lit up by tube-lights, but the dark heads swayed in a field of bright saris, purple and shining green and blue and deep red, all the way to the orange statue of Hanuman flying, suavely holding the mountain above his head.

Wayne Johnston - New Author

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams

James Wood on Tolstoy

This might seem like a trivial point, but it is a little clue to the vision of the whole novel. Tolstoy sees reality as a system of constant adjustments, a long, tricky convoy of surprises, as realities jostle together and the vital, solipsistic ego is affronted by the otherness of the world.

-- The New Yorker article.

Sacred Games - pg. 42

'Bashir Ali,' Gaitonde said. The voice was commanding, like an emperor's, sure of its consonants and generosity.

Sacred Games - pg. 20

A murder case involving Bangladeshis was unusal because they usually kept their head low, worked, tried to make a living, and tried very hard to avoid attracting attention.

Sacred Games - pg. 14

They had a clear stretch of road now, all the way up to the intersection at Karanth Chowk. They sped past clusters of apartment buildings to the right, ensconced behind a long grey wall, and on the left the untidy shacks of a basti opened doors directly on to the road.

Sacred Games - pg. 8

'The roof needed work urgently. As you know, it's a very old house. My ancestral abode really. Also, it needed a new bathroom. Mamta and my granddaughters have moved back home. As you know. So.'

[Note: cadences with tum jantay hi ho/as you know rendered in English. not sure if it's a good idea.]

Sacred Games - pg. 7

There was an eight-foot wall around the whole complex, of the same reddish brown brick as the station house and the zonal headquarters. Both buildings were two storeys high, with identical red-tiled roofs and oval-topped windows. There was a promise in the grim arches, in the thickness of the walls and the uncompromising weight if the facades, there was the reassurance of bulky power, and so law and order.

Sacred Games - pg. 5

As Sartaj read, he could hear the elderly man sitting across from Kamble talking about slow death. His eighty-year-old mausi had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken her hip. They had checked her into the Shivsagar Polyclinic, where she had borne with her usual stoicism the unrelenting pain in her old bones. After all, she had marched with Gandhi-ji in forty-two and had suffered her first fracture then - of the collarbone from a mounted policeman's lathi - and also the bare floors of jail cells afterwards. She had an old-fashioned strength, which saw sacrifice of the self as one's duty in the world. But when the pressure ulcers flowered their deep red wounds on her arms and shoulders and back, even she had said, perhaps it is time for me to die.

Sacred Games - pg. 4

Katekar was a senior constable, an old subordinate, a colleague really - they had worked together for almost seven years now off and on.

[Notes: This is in the beginning section of this 900 page book and Katekar's character has been described for the first time. I am looking how much of the relevant plot-history is coming out of this one sentence. Interesting]

João Guimarães Rosa - Brazilian Joyce

The Devil To Pay In The Backlands

Rosa, João Guimarães, 1908-1967.

The devil to pay in the Backlands :

New York : Knopf, l963.

494 p. ; 22 cm.

Morris Library PQ9697 .R76 D4813x 1963 Normal Loan

To Do List

• Average Backoff Number checks
• Probability of TX Success
• Probability of Idle
• Check Kim's numbers
  

Margot

Dress me like a clown is a perfunctory tune. It starts off with a cello solo and then progresses into the standard four-piece rhythm da-da da-da drum section. These two elements play off of each other, the singer drones and there is some talk of drinking and usual things... the chorus builds up in the background. The best part is the ending which strips away all the arrangements to a bare acoustic jam.

The Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice as Chronicled by Her Minstrel Laura: A Novel in Thirteen Books and Seven Intermezzos

Irmtraud Morgner's Novel Amazon Link (high priority)

To Do List

• Hidden Node Probability of Success Modelling
• Residual Capacity Calculations
  

Napoleon Symphony

Burgess, Anthony, 1917-

Napoleon symphony

New York, Knopf; [distributed by Random House] 1974.

vii, 365 p. 22 cm.

Morris Library PR 6073 .I4678 N35 Normal Loan

The Devil in the Hills - Closing

It seemed to me that I had always known them. We got out at the level crossing. The branch road began there, with kerbs and low hedges, a white, cement road. We exchanged a few words and joked, Gabriella's hard face smiled an instant. Poli waved his hand.
Then they left and we went to the Mill to drink.

The Devil in the Hills - pg. 183

"The oldest soul that is inside each of us is the youngest -- the soul we had when we were boys. It seems to me I've always been a boy. It is the oldest habit that we have ...."

Sacred Games - Opening

Policeman's Day

A white Pomeranian named Fluffy flew out of a fifth-floor window in Panna, which was a brand new building with the painter's scaffolding still around it. Fluffy screamed in her little lap-dog voice all the way down, like a little white kettle losing steam, bounced off the bonnet of a Cielo, and skidded to a halt near the rank of schoolgirls waiting for the St Mary's Convent bus.

First published in 2006
by Faber and Faber Limited
3 Queen Square London WCIN 3AU
Typeset by Faber and Faber Limited
Printed in England by Mackays of Chatham, plc
All rights reserved
Vikram Chandra, 2006

The Devil in the Hills - pg. 110

I had already forgotten her honey-blonde hair, her bare, sandalled feet, and her constant air of just having stepped onto a beach

The Devil in the Hills - pg. 98

"Religion," Pieretto said, stopping, "is understanding how things go. Holy water is no use. You have to speak with people, understand them, know what each of them wants. They all want something out of life, they want to do something -- exactly what, they're never sure of. Well, it is in this intent that they all find God. It is enough to understand, and to help others to understand...."
"And when you're dead," Oreste remarked, "what have you understood?"
"You damned grave-digger!" Pieretto said. "When you're dead you have no more intentions."

The Devil in the Hills - pg. 78

His peasants were spraying the rows of vines with Bordeaux mixtures; bent under the canicular heat, they moved about in blouses and trousers hardened and splashed with blue, pumping the blue water from the brass sprays on their backs.The vine-leaves dripped, the pumps squeaked. We stopped above the great reservoir full of pure water, deep and opaque, like a blue eye, like a sky reversed.

The Devil in the Hills - pg. 69

We went the next day. A thin watercourse ran right down the middle of the hollow that divided our hill from the irregular downs, and we descended from the vineyard among fields of millet, until we came to a steep cleft, full of acacias and alders. At the bottom, the thread of water had formed a string of shallow puddles; there was one below a spring, from which we could see only the sky and the screen of briars. During the hot hours the sun beat straight down into it.

Book List (revisited)

• The Devil in the Hills - Cesare Pavese
• The Voyeur - Alain Robbe-Grillet
• Sacred Games - Vikram Chandra
  

The Devil in the Hills - pg. 61

Oreste's house had a peeling, reddish terrace, and it overlooked a sea of valleys and ravines bathed in a strong light which hurt your eyes. All morning I had ridden through the plain, a plain which looked familiar to me, and looking out of the train window I had caught sight of hedgegrows, mirrors of water, flocks of geese and meadow expanses that I recognized from my infancy. I was still thinking about these things when we entered between precipitous banks and you had to look up to see the sky. The train stopped beyond a narrow tunnel. I found myself in the heat and dust of the station square, my eyes meeting chalky slopes on all sides. A fat waggon-driver showed me the road; I had a good way to climb, for the village was high up. I threw my bag on the waggon and we went up together, matching the slow pace of the oxen.

Margot and The Nuclear So and So's

when in doubt make someone call up your creditors to back you up a little...

The Devil in the Hills - pg. 34

"These modern nights," Pieretto said. "They are as old as the world."

The Devil in the Hills - pg. 32

"It's beautiful to wake up and have no more illusions," he continued, smiling. "You feel yourself free but responsible. There is a tremendous power within us, freedom. You can reach innocence. You become disposed to suffer."

The Devil in the Hills - pg. 10

It was damp, dark, moonless; fireflies flashed. After a bit we slowed down, sweating. As we walked along we talked about our work, our experiences, our futures. We talked about ourselves with enthusiasm, we even drew Oreste into the conversation; we had walked through those streets other times, warmed by wine or by the company; but none of this mattered, it was a pretext for walking, for having the bulk of the hill beneath our feet. We walked among fields, boundary walls, gates of villas; we breathed the asphalt and the woods.

The Devil in the Hills - Opening

We were very young. I believe I never slept that year. But I had a friend who slept even less than I did, and certain mornings you would see him strolling about in front of the station during the hour in which the first trains arrive and depart. We used to leave him late at night, on his doorstep; Pieretto would take another walk and even see the dawn in, and then drink his coffee. Now he was studying the sleepy faces of streetsweepers and cyclists. Even he could not remember the discussions of the previous night: but having stayed awake on them, he had digested them, and he said calmly: "It's late. I'm going to bed."

Translated from the Italian
Il Diavolo sulle colline

All rights reserved

Originally published in 1959 by The Noonday Press, New York
Reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, Inc.
Reprinted in 1975 by Greenwood Press,
a division of Williamhouse-Regency Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

Shostakovich - Piano Trio. No. #2 in E minor Op. 67

There was a funny anecdote that the conductor told about Dimitry Shostakovich in his introduction to this piece last night. Shostakovich was visiting the US and he was talking to students in a music conservatory in Baltimore and someone asked him that the problem with Soviet Union schools was that people weren't allowed to compose what they wanted. Shostakovich replied back that the problem with American conservatories was that people were allowed to compose what they wanted.!!

... and yet, a few days more - Faiz

Opinion pieces: an artform in Urdu journalism

I grew up reading various opinion pieces in Jang newspaper. Opinion pieces, "Columns" as they are known, are considered to be one of the major offering of any urdu newspaper. The roster of regular Columnists that a daily newspaper maintains, is considered to be a mark of prestige and it is a major selling point. I consider the writing, the shape and the masterful application of factual lacuna for rhetorical purposes of columns as a major artform.

Columns are supposed to cover opinions mainly related to the burning political issues of the time. The writings are meant to be incisive, analytical and factual and carry an air of self-importance. But this whole circus of punditry is hardly about any of those things. It is like a fluid narrative where the main voice, the invisible protagonist, the writer gets to shape a narrative within. The buried narrative unfolds in real-time bit by bit, column after column and accumulates layers as years pile up. The writer sometimes give a nod to this by speaking outside of his construction but rarely. Like for example today, one of the veteran journalist has put in a note at the end of his column in which he offered sarcastically an apology to his readers just in case, due to changing political situation, his today's subject matter becomes totally irrelevant by the time his creation comes out on paper. Oh, well.

PS: Oh, I absolutely like the title. It's called Temporary Murder referring the absurdity of "suspending" the constitution

To Do List

• Capacity Calculations
• Meeting with Stephan
• Brainstorming: Channel Allocation
  

Mahler graffiti in Toronto

The New Yorker's music critic, Alex Ross has on his blog (http:///www.therestisnoise.com) this funny image of someone's tagging the name of Gustav Mahler. ha!

Cover-page of a Pakistani Newspaper

This is the standard print edition of an Urdu newspaper in Pakistan. It folds in the middle and the news-stories are spread around in the top and bottom-half of the paper in a spatially descending format according to their importance. The main headline is written in the centre of the top-half with an special calligraphic font and carries a larger font-size than other news as it is obvious. Normally, the main headline is not spread out from one end (starting from right) to the other end of the page unless, the paper wants to stress the fateful nature of the headline content. In that case, the main-headline border which is enveloping here: a very thickset font, gushing decorative hyphens and slanted symbols around the text, runs horizontally across the page (referred to as an eight-column headline) as it can be seen in the posted image. The main-headline reads (literal translation):

Emergency Imposed, Constitution Suspended, PCO* Arrived, Chief Justice Fired

*PCO: provisional constitution order enforced by the coup-maker to replace the constitution

Ted Goransson making a point on "Bara no soretsu"

But then the better parts of me just enjoy the experience, part of which is wonder why the Japanese make the best French films. I think there's a discussion in there about cultural assertiveness and military failure seen as societal spaghettithinking.

Film: Bara No Soretsu
Dir: Toshio Matsumoto
(currently unavailable at Netflix)

New Writer: James McCourt

Amazon Link


Book Description (Amazon Blurb)
Diva Mawrdew Czgowchwz (pronounced "Mardu Gorgeous") bursts like the most brilliant of comets onto the international opera scene, only to confront the deadly malice and black magic of her rivals. Outrageous and uproarious, flamboyant and serious as only the most perfect frivolity can be, James McCourt's entrancing send-up of the world of opera has been a cult classic for more than a quarter-century. This comic tribute to the love of art is a triumph of art and love by a contemporary American master.

Khwaja Ghulam Farid on the legend of Sa' ssee & Punnuh

Sa' see and Punnuh is a legend on the template of star-crossed lovers that roam around the sandy mounds of the Thar desert region. Famous Seraiki poet Khwaja Ghulam Farid created some intense poetry using the form 'kafis' in Seraiki. These poems take the legend and overlay metaphors and images that echo typical Sufist style conflation of Beloved/Divine, multiplicity/oneness...
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Where the desert grasses twist my love Ever-shifting shapes exist my love
The crickets creak, the pigeons coo
The foxes howl, the hyenas mew
The geckoes puff, the lizards whoo
The snakes and serpents hiss my love

In these surrounding rises the voice of Sassi.
Oh, in this desert's blessed sight I'll die indeed but not take fright
As for Punnu, he becomes for the Sufi a living and pervasive symbol of divine beauty.
See Punnal's presence everywhere
All mystics mark and hear know only he is here
All else shall disappear

Frederick Mershimer's Subway

[Notes: It's done with a 17th century printing process that was once used by Escher]

Béla Bartók

"We must drink our fill not from your silver goblets but from cool mountain springs."