Archive for January 2002

The following punctuation marks appear, in order, in a single sentence: “, , , , , , , , ; , , , , , , : , , , , , — — .”. The sentence is by Proust, and reads:

And then it seemed as though the signs which were to bring me, on this day of all days, out of my disheartened state and restore to me my faith in literature, were thronging eagerly about me, for, a butler who had long been in the service of the Prince of Guermantes having recognised me and brought to me in the library where I was waiting, so that I might not have to go to the buffet, a selection of petits fours and a glass of orangeade, I wiped my mouth with the napkin which he had given me; and instantly, as though I had been the character in the Arabian Nights who unwittingly accomplishes the very rite which can cause to appear, visible to him alone, a docile genie ready to convey him to a great distance, a new vision of azure passed before my eyes, but an azure that this time was pure and saline and swelled into blue and bosomy undulations, and so strong was this impression that the moment to which I was transported seemed to me to be the present moment: more bemused than on the day when I had wondered whether I was really going to be received by the Princesse de Guermantes or whether everything round me would not collapse, I thought that the servant had just opened the window on to the beach and that all things invited me to go down and stroll along the promenade while the tide was high, for the napkin which I had used to wipe my mouth had precisely the same degree of stiffness and starchedness as the towel with which I had found it so awkward to dry my face as I stood in front of the window on the first day of my arrival at Balbec, and this napkin now, in the library of the Prince de Guermantes’s house, unfolded for me—concealed within its smooth surfaces and its folds—the plumage of an ocean green and blue like the tail of a peacock. (pp. 219–20, Time Regained)

This madeleine seems rather implausible: does anyone really take note of napkin stiffness and starchedness?

I’m excited to find that Proust really is uncommonly good, and he isn’t especially hard to negotiate, either. (But: I’ve only read a few hundred pages of Time Regained, which happens to be the last book…)

A nice, happily complimentary essay on A la recherche du temps perdu is Daniel Mark Epstein’s “Proust regained.” Epstein writes that Proust contains, haphazardly, “pages of astonishing perception and then passages of appalling stupidity.” His example of the latter is followed by a thrilling put-down: “[Epstein quotes Proust] ‘Do we not find every day that adultery, when it is based upon genuine love, does not weaken family feelings and the duties of kinship, but rather revivifies them?’ No, Marcel, we don’t. And your bourgeois neighbors didn’t either—not every day or at all.” You can’t say that! “No, Marcel, we don’t.” This is Proust!

Proust is also funny. In the bits below, Baron de Charlus likes to be flogged in brothels by young men; Jupien runs the brothel:

Jupien on the other hand felt that it was not quite sufficient to introduce M. de Charlus to a young milkman. He would murmur to him with a wink: “He’s a milkman but he’s also one of the most dangerous thugs in Belleville” (and it was with a superbly salacious note in his voice that Jupien uttered the word “thug”). And as if this recommendation were not sufficient, he would try to add one or two further “citations.” “He has several convictions for theft and burglary, he was in Fresnes for assulting” (the same salacious note in his voice) “and practically murdering people in the street, and he’s been in a punishment battalion in Africa. He killed his sergeant.” (156)

Later, M. de Charlus complains about the quality of the beating he received:

“I did not want to speak in front of that boy, who is very nice and does his best. But I don’t find him sufficiently brutal. He has a charming face, but when he calls me a filthy brute he might be just repeating a lesson.” “I assure you, nobody has said a word to him,” replied Jupien, without perceiving how improbable this statement was. (156)

(The poor Baron.)

Unfortunately, insufficient brutality was not the only failing of Jupien’s gigolos:

Occasionally Jupien warned the young men that they ought to be more perverse. Then one of them, as if he were confessing to something diabolical, would hazard: “I say, Baron, you won’t believe me, but when I was a kid I used to watch my parents making love through the key-hole. Pretty vicious, isn’t it? You look like you think that’s a cock and bull story, but I swear it’s the truth.” And M. de Charlus was driven at once to despair and to exasperation by the factitious attempt at perversity, the result of which was only to reveal such depths both of stupidity and innocence. (168)

Another book I read sort-of recently is Shanghai Baby, by Wei Hui. It’s also very good.

The story of the translation intrigues me though. The English is off-kilter, abbreviated, sometimes ungrammatical (IM-like?); it could easily have been written by a person not very familiar with English. (“I find smoking in the wind a real pleasure, creating the illusion that all your worries are being blown away.”) Unusual words often pop up: “Madonna smiled sarcastically. ‘You play the devoted couple in public. Isn’t that a bit sick-making?’” “Sick-making”? What’s wrong with “sickening”? Or “nauseating”?

All this makes the book more authentically foreign and exotic—which probably increases its appeal in countries like Australia. But it wasn’t written in English by someone for whom English is a second language; it was written in Chinese, and translated into English by Bruce Humes. Is it really a faithful translation? The text does contain a suspicious number of cliches for which there is unlikely to be a Chinese equivalent: “like a fish to water,” “head buried in the sand,” “cooking up a storm,” etc.

Out of all the things that are in the world, I think the thing I’d like most is the ability to do things faster. Most of all I’d like to be able to write faster, I think.

You know that scene in American Beauty where the plastic bag is blown about by the wind? I thought that was entirely a special effect until I saw this piece of paper being blown around a few days ago. I shot some video: 160×120 (220k); 320×240 (720k). You’ll need QuickTime.

Arundhati Roy irritates me. Lachlan lent me The Cost of Living, which is a small book containing two essays, “The Greater Common Good” (about the Narmada Valley project, which is to displace million for doubtful and dubious ends) and “The End of Imagination” (about the evils of nuclear power, written in reponse to Pakistan and India’s acquisition of nuclear weapons). She writes with an annoying self-assured smirk that might be amusing to readers who think exactly as she does, but isn’t very effective in persuading others to come around to her point of view: “… ‘Deterrence’ is the buzzword of the people who like to think of themselves as hawks. (Nice birds, those. Cool. Stylish. Predatory. Pity there won’t be many of them around after the war. Extinction is a word we must try and get used to.)” I hope writing like that at least makes her feel better, because it’s not the least bit close to my English teacher’s model of good persuasive writing.

Of atomic weapons, she writes:

But let us pause to give credit where it’s due. Whom must we thank for all this?

The Men who made it happen. The Masters of the Universe. Ladies and gentlemen, the United States of America! Come on up here folks, stand up and take a bow. Thank you for doing this to the world. Thank you for making a difference. Thank you for showing us the way. Thank you for altering the very meaning of life.

This is too much. On 2 August, 1939, Einstein famously wrote to Roosevelt urging him to develop nuclear weapons. He did this because he feared that the Germans would develop them first. And so (eventually) the Manhattan Project was born and from there we got Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Cold War, etc. Could Germany have developed the bomb? No, probably not. Was Einstein right to think that they might? Yeah, absolutely. So was Einstein wrong to plead with Roosevelt? No, he wasn’t. But now we have Roy in effect telling Einstein, “Thank you for altering the very meaning of life”? Why, thank you, Arundhati. Nuclear weapons may well be a bad thing, but “the Men who made it happen” don’t deserve this.

Are the citations written for winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature becoming more and more incomprehensible?

The Swedish Academy started out more or less on the right track with an award to Sully Prudhomme “in special recognition of his poetic composition, which gives evidence of lofty idealism, artistic perfection and a rare combination of the qualities of both heart and intellect.” A little ornate perhaps, but this is the Nobel Prize–”because he wrote a bitchin’ book” wouldn’t cut it, to be sure.

In 1923 W.B. Yeats got the prize “for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.” By this time the citations had grown more grand, but they’re still very much comprehensible. And there are still straight-forward citations too: Sigrid Undset won in 1928 “principally for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages”; Pearl Buck won in 1938 “for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces.”

By 1960 the citation’s sentence structure has increased significantly in complexity: in that year Saint-John Perse won for “the soaring flight and the evocative imagery of his poetry which in a visionary fashion reflects the conditions of our time.” Easy enough to follow, I suppose, but I can’t imagine the mostly unnecessary “in a visionary fashion” popping up in such a fashion during the prize’s first few decades. I wonder, too, if battles were fought over the inclusion of “soaring flight.” It’s a little … poetic, don’t you think?

Eugenio Montale’s 1975 citation reads: “for his distinctive poetry which, with great artistic sensitivity, has interpreted human values under the sign of an outlook on life with no illusions.” The Academy’s grip on the tendrils on meaning is slipping. To what does the “with no illusions” belong? Does Montale interpret “with no illusions,” or does he use his illusion-free outlook on life to “interpret human values” (whatever that means)? And “under the sign of”? The “with great artistic sensitivity” is surely meaningless and serves only to futher clog up what was already a pretty far-gone sentence.

The citation of 1983 (for Sir William Golding) has this form: “for his novels which, with the A of B and the C of D, illuminate the human condition in the world of today.” Now this citation has a fairly straight-forward structure: if A had been, say, “clarity”, B had been “Dr. Seuss”, C had been “charm” and D had been “A.A. Milne,” we would have had a real citation on our hands. But of course the Academy would fuck it up (again). The actual citation reads: “for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today.” Sigh. Is “realistic narrative art” really famed for its perspicuity?? I’m not even sure if the citation is in the “A of B” and “C of D” form. Whoever can tell? It’s a mess.

Things haven’t improved much. In 1998 the prize was won by Jose Saramago “who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality.” I’m particularly taken by the “continually enables us once again.” Why would “enables us” not do? When we were “enabled” for the first time?

And in 2001, V.S. Naipaul received the prize for “having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories.” Now I know what it means for a police officer, say, to be “incorruptible.” But what does it mean here? What author demonstrates corruptible scrutiny? I can’t see any justification for the “the presence,” either.

Are the citations the result of bad translations? Do they actually make sense? Is it not worrisome that the citations for medicine (”for his discovery of Prions–a new biological principle of infection”; “for their discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle”) make markedly more sense than those for literature?

[The official site of the Nobel Prize for Literature has the citations on separate pages; another, far uglier site has them on the same page.]