The READIN Family Album
Greetings! (July 15, 2007)

READIN

Jeremy's journal

The very idea of the (definitive) translation is misguided, Borges tells us; there are only drafts, approximations.

Andrew Hurley


(This is a page from my archives)
Front page

Archives index
Subscribe to RSS

This page renders best in Firefox (or Safari, or Chrome)

Saturday, February 11th, 2012

🦋 in re. The Christ of Elqui

(Continuing in this year's theme of re-readings:) A correspondent has gotten me back interested in Domingo Zárate Vega and The Art of Resurrection. This is the frontspiece to the book, a pastoral letter written on the 25th of February, 1931, by the bishop of La Serena, José María Caro; in my own rough/not-fully-coherent translation (original at Casa del Libro):

Dear children of Our Lord:

What has been transpiring among you has filled with grief your bishop's heart.

A poor demented man presents himself among you -- one like those who fill our madhouses; and the faithful (I include in this adjective all those who go to church and who comply with their religion, fulfill their sacred duties) have received him as God's messenger, as the Messiah himself, no less, and have made themselves his apostles, his flock.

And meanwhile the faithful -- the judicious, the educated faithful -- have been tolerating this scandal, this blasphemy, tolerating mockery from these faithless maniacs; whose meanness of consciousness seizes any occasion to display its own lack of taste, lack of discretion, of appreciation for the things and people most worthy of universal respect and veneration... How can such a thing have happened -- how can such a hallucination be contagious? Our Lord has permitted it as a punishment for some one and as a humiliation for many.

We are all sensible enough to tell when someone else is in his right mind and when he has lost it. If among you, some poor campesino stood up and claimed in all seriousness, to be the King of England, if he surrounded himself with ministers (like such a king), and wore a special gown to show his office... Is there anyone among you, even a single one, who would not see the madness such a poor man was suffering from? Wouldn't it be the same if he claimed to be Our Holy Father?

And yet there are those among you who do not recognize his madness, because he claims to be not a person of this world, but nothing less than King of Kings and Lord of Lords himself. I repeat myself, our madhouses are full of just such things... Will any one among you let himself be led by the hallucinations of such a madman?

I pray that you, you who have suffered before this spectacle, will assist with your charity, with your prayers and with your counsels in ridding us of this contagious madness.

I ask, for the love of God and of one's brother, the love that we all must bear, I ask that you do everything, with your parish in mind, devote every force to keeping from this danger those who might fall into it, and to bringing back those who have been lost to this madness.

I hope, besides this, that when the authorities come to understand this evil, as I have demonstrated it to you, they will bring some remedy, will separate this danger from us all.

I wish you peace and felicity in Our Lord.
José María Caro

Caro Rodríguez would later be named (by Pius Ⅻ) Archbishop of Santiago and a Cardinal of the Catholic church, the first Chilean Cardinal. I could swear I saw a better translation of this letter somewhere, when I was first reading The Art of Resurrection. But am forgetting where now, or by whom.

posted evening of February 11th, 2012: 1 response
➳ More posts about The Art of Resurrection

Friday, February 10th, 2012

🦋 Welcome 3% Readers

Glad to see you! Have a look around...

posted afternoon of February 10th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about The Secret History of Costaguana

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

🦋 Bicentennial

(A day late, but) Happy Birthday, Mr. Dickens!

posted morning of February 8th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Birthdays

Sunday, February 5th, 2012

🦋 Long shadows of winter

A walk to Meadow Park with one's dog serves as a nice reminder of what attracted one initially to South Orange...

posted afternoon of February 5th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about the Family Album

Friday, February third, 2012

🦋 Let's Listen to

The Trashmen!

You're welcome.

posted evening of February third, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Music

Thursday, February second, 2012

🦋 Epifarfulla

Parecido a las otras utilizaciones de los labios y las manos, como sonreír, acariciar, enfurruñarse y pegar puñetazos, el ruido vocal hace enlaces entre la gente que desean o necesitan ser conectado -- para el apoyo reciproco o para establecer la jerarquía o para declarar la hostilidad, por ejemplo. Así vemos que la canguro que hace monerías al niño realiza un acción lingüistica similar en general al escolar ambicioso que me saluda con un tono ascendente en la última sílaba del «Good morning, sir.» Y si esas acciónes sean comunicaciones, entonces necesitamos redefinir la comunicación: no como la transmisión entre A y B de estados mentales, menos aún como la transmisión de «informaciones», sino como la establecimiento, el refuerzo, la modificación de relaciones interpersonales del momento. Y sería mejor decir, no es comunicación, sino lenguaje. El lenguaje es una manera humana de relacionar a otros seres humanos.

...

El cuento de Babel se equivoca: el uso primordial del discurso humano fue más probable ser diferente, no el mismo.

-- D. Bellos
¿Es un pez en tu oreja?

posted evening of February second, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Is that a fish in your ear?

Wednesday, February first, 2012

🦋 Tentative setlist

Come and see Mountain Station at the Crossroads in Garwood next week! Next Thursday at 8 to be precise.

  1. This wheel's on fire
  2. The road to Lisdoonvarna
  3. The L&N don't stop here anymore
  4. Behind that locked door
  5. Red Overalls
  6. Country Honk
  7. Carrie Brown
  8. White Freightliner Blues
  9. Johnny 99
  10. To be young is to be sad is to be high
  11. Harvest Home
  12. 4&20 Blues
  13. Walk right in
  14. You ain't goin nowhere

(Update as of Saturday): We played the set through tonight and it took just about one hour. If we do everything the same speed on Thursday and without any screw-ups (there were a couple tonight which stretched the set out slightly), we will probably have space to play one more song, which will probably be NJ Transit.

posted evening of February first, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Mountain Station

🦋 más elegías

There aren't any words in the Bible anyways, let alone jokes,
I wouldn't worry so much about translating it,
about being swept into its blank void,
slipping frictionless and lucid across its empty page.
Those who have preceded you have left no spoor, no trace,
that you can make out anyways, and yet you know
full well their journey and retrace it.
Rilke asked who'd hear him,
among the choirs of heaven or
among the rankèd Angels or among their hierarchy, or something,
if he cried out -- and your throat is still,
your sigh is dead a-borning. Candle's flicker casts its shadows
among the ranked symbols and their blanknesses,
their blacknesses:
this yellowing forest of text.

posted evening of February first, 2012: 1 response
➳ More posts about Poetry

🦋 Elegías del principiante

Ninguna palabra contiene el Biblio en todo caso, ninguna broma,
no tenga tanto miedo de traducirlo,
de dejarte arrastrado por su blanco vacío
deslizarte sin fricción y lúcido a través de la página.
Ellos quienes te precedían ninguno rastro han dejado,
ninguno que se puede observar, pero conoces
íntimamente este huela que retrazas.

There aren't any words in the Bible anyways, let alone jokes,
I wouldn't worry so much about translating it,
about being swept into its blank void,
slipping frictionless and lucid across its empty page.
Those who have preceded you have left no spoor, no trace,
that you can make out anyways, and yet you know
full well their journey and retrace it.

posted evening of February first, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Writing Projects

🦋 Before Don Quixote

Some idle Googling the other day brought me to Mercedes García-Arenal and Fernandez Rodríguez-Mediano's essay on Miguel de Luna, Arabic Christian from Granada and thence to de Luna's True History of King Roderic... Lots to read... (And can it really be true that de Luna's True History has never been translated into English? It seems strange to think such a thing but I am not finding it anywhere. This looks like a pretty key bit of history of literature to me...)

posted evening of February first, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Don Quixote

Previous posts
Archives

Drop me a line! or, sign my Guestbook.
    •
Check out Ellen's writing at Patch.com.

What's of interest:

(Other links of interest at my Google+ page. It's recommended!)

Where to go from here...

Friends and Family
Programming
Texts
Music
Woodworking
Comix
Blogs
South Orange