READIN

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

🦋 Museum of Innocence backstory

I pass by these walls, the walls of Layla
And I kiss this wall and that wall
It's not Love of the houses that has taken my heart
But of the One who dwells in those houses

-- Qays ibn al-Mulawwah

Interesting! I had never heard of that story but some quick experimentation with Google will demonstrate that its influence is very broad in the Islamic world. The New York Turkmen Institute has put online Sofi Huri's translation of Fuzûlî's version of the story, which appears to be the primary Ottoman version -- it was made into an opera by Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyov (produced in NYC just this past Spring by Yo-yo Ma) -- Here are Erkan Oğur and İsmail H. Demircioğlu performing "Leyli Mecnun" from that opera:

posted evening of October 22nd, 2009: Respond
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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

🦋 So many years later

I wonder when the narrative present of The Museum of Innocence is. The novel is rooted very firmly in time -- in the first few pages we see that the high point of the narrator's life was on May 26^th, 1975 (a few weeks past my fifth birthday), and that his involvement with his distant relation Füsun had started a month previous to that, on April 27^th (when I was still four years old) -- when is he speaking though? In chapter 4 he says, "As I sit down so many years later and devote myself heart and soul to the telling of my story..." -- I hope (and expect) his road to the present moment will be as much a part of the story as are the events he is narrating.

Kemal was 30 at the time of the happiest moment of his life, so was born in 1945, the same age as my uncle. So he could well be narrating in my present moment, as a 65-year-old. Pamuk is 57 years old now, perhaps his narrator is his age, in which case he would be speaking in 2002. Or maybe something else.

The excerpt that appeared in the New Yorker this summer under the title "Distant Relations" was adapted from chapters 2 through 6 -- I thought at the time that it would work much better in the context of a longer novel than as a short story, and I was right -- instead of getting to the end and thinking "well, then what?" you just turn the page and keep reading...

Update: The narrative present has to be after 2007; when Sibel leaves him in 1976, Kemal says "I would not see her again for 31 years." He opened the museum in the mid-90's -- there is a reference to him doing this "twenty years later."

posted evening of October 20th, 2009: Respond
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🦋 Opening the door of the museum

I am happy: The Museum of Innocence was published at long last today, the first novel Orhan Pamuk has published since I fell in love with his voice back in 2007. I have been anticipating this since last August when I saw it mentioned in McGaha's Autobiographies of Orhan Pamuk...

I'm wondering idly -- only read a few pages this evening, they are nice -- they have the same beguiling prose quality I remember from the opening of The Black Book -- how well the metaphor of strolling through a museum will work for the experience of reading this book. Will I linger over certain images, walk briskly past others which are not as engaging? Will I want to stay past closing time or will I find myself wanting to go home early, when I have not even gotten to see the exhibit on the third floor?... I'm usually a bit intimidated by museums, I have not yet felt even a bit intimidated by Pamuk's prose* -- its inviting affect is the thing I love most about it. Well; we'll see.

Here are the epigraphs to this book:

These were innocent people, so innocent that they thought poverty a crime that wealth would allow them to forget. (from the notebooks of Celâl Salik)

[Celâl Salik? Is that Celâl from The Black Book? I sort of think so but not sure. Did the Black Book character have a last name? ...and, yes! the columnist in The Black Book is named Celâl Salik.]

If a man could pass thro' Paradise in a Dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his Soul had really been there, and found that flower in his hand when he awoke -- Aye? and what then? (from the notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

[This is very nice, and definitely calls to mind the opening of The Black Book.]

First I surveyed the little trinkets on the table, her lotions and her perfumes. I picked them up and examined them one by one. I turned her little watch over in my hand. Then I looked at her wardrobe. All those dresses and accessories piled one on top of the other. These things that every woman used to complete herself -- they induced in me a painful and desparate loneliness; I felt myself hers, I longed to be hers. (from the notebooks of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar)

*Oh wait, sorry, I am forgetting about The New Life. So make that "have not in most cases".

posted evening of October 20th, 2009: 1 response
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Monday, October 19th, 2009

🦋 Landscape physiognomy

While I'm thinking of it, a lovely passage from Unamuno's Por las tierras de Portugal y de España (quoted by Antonio Garrosa Resina in his essay on The Rivers of the Douro Valley in Literature):

Un río es algo que tiene una fuerte y marcada personalidad, es algo con fisionomía y vida propias. Una de mis más vivos deseos es el de seguir el curso de nuestros grandes ríos, el Duero, el Miño, el Tajo, el Guadiana, el Guadalquivir, el Ebro. Se les siente vivir. Cogerlos desde su más tierna infancia, desde su cuna, desde la fuente de su más largo brazo, y seguirles por caídas y rompientes, por angosturas y hoces, por vegas y riberas. La vena de agua es para ellos algo así como la conciencia para nosotros, unas veces agitada y espumosa, otras alojada de cieno, turbia y opaca, otras cristalina y clara, rumorosa a trechos. El agua es, en efecto, la consciencia del paisaje.

A river is something which has a strong, marked personality, is something with a life and physiognomy of its own. One of my strongest desires is that of following the course of our great rivers, the Duero, the Miño, the Tagus, the Guadiana, the Guadalquivir, the Ebro. To experience them. To take them from their deepest infancy, from their cradle, from the well-spring of their long arms, and to follow them through their falls and rapids, through their narrows and pools, through fields and river-banks. The vein of water is for them something like the conscience for us, sometimes foaming and agitated, other times full of mud, turbid and opaque, other times crystalline and clear, whispering along. Water is in effect the self-awareness of the landscape.

posted evening of October 19th, 2009: Respond
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🦋 Barefoot Portugal

Found it! -- Many thanks to Deborah for sending me Unamuno's poem "Portugal" (an unpublished fragment), from which the line quoted in The Stone Raft is taken.

Portugal, Portugal, tierra descalza,
acurrucada junta al mar, tu madre,
llorando soledades
de trágicos amores,
mientras tus pies desnudos las espumas
saladas bañan,
tu verde cabellera suelta al viento
-- cabellera de pinos rumorosos --
los codos descansando en las rodillas,
y la cara morena entre ambas palmas,
clavas tus ojos donde el sol se acuesta
solo en la mar inmensa,
y en el lento naufragio así meditas
de tus glorias de Oriente,
cantando fados quejumbrosa y lenta.

Portugal, Portugal, o barefoot land,
nestled by the sea, your mother,
weeping lonely
over tragic loves
while the salty foam
bathes your naked feet,
your green locks loose to the wind --
locks of whispering pines --
your elbows resting on your knees
and your dark face between your palms,
cast your eyes where the sun goes down
alone in the immense sea
and in this slow shipwreck reflect
on your Oriental glories,
singing fados, plaintive and slow.

Well: this brings up a question for me about Pontiero's translation in The Stone Raft. The context is that José and Joachim have just met Pedro and the three are having dinner, watching the news on TV where they see images of people standing on Portugal's beaches looking at the oncoming ocean. Let's look at the Portuguese and Pontiero's rendering together:

Agora ei-los ali, como Unamuno disse que estavam, la cara morena entre ambas palmas, clavas tus ojos donde el sol se acuesta solo en la mar imensa, todos os povos com o mar a poente fazem o mesmo, este é moreno, não há outra diferença, e navegou.

There they are now, as Unamuno described them, his swarthy face cupped in the palms of his hands, Fix your eyes where the lonely sun sets in the immense sea, all nations with the sea to the west do the same, this race is swarthy, there is no other particularity, and it has sailed the seas.

I'm not going to argue with italicizing the quoted portion and capitalizing its first letter, I mean it's not in the original but it reads fine; but how could "la cara morena" possibly be understood as referring to Unamuno's face rather than as part of the quotation? This makes no sense at all to me -- it's an interesting image but it can't be the image intended in the original passage. Note how "moreno" is used again referring to the Portuguese race -- this is the only distinction between them and other peoples with the sea to the west. Here's my attempt at an improvement, relying heavily on Pontiero for a sense of the flow of the passage:

There they are now, as Unamuno described them, Your dark face between your palms, cast your eyes where the sun goes down alone in the immense sea, all peoples with the sea to the west do the same, this one is dark-skinned, there's no other distinction, and has sailed the seas.

posted evening of October 19th, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, October 18th, 2009

🦋 Lonely, immense

Here's a new line of attack for a problem that's been bugging me a little while; when I was reading The Stone Raft I was enchanted by the line, which Saramago attributes to Unamuno, "Fix your eyes where the lonely sun sets in the immense sea." Haven't had any luck figuring out where that line came from, if he's quoting an actual Unamuno poem -- I don't know what the Spanish being quoted (in Portuguese, and then translated) is, and the English does not seem to match up with any existing translations...

Tonight I had the thought, why not try writing something with that line as a starting point, and taking as read that it was from a poem of Unamuno's... A first try (and assuming this line of inquiry bears any fruit, some more updates as time passes) below the fold.

1. Fix your eyes where the lonely sun sets in the immense sea, he said in Spain, might just as well have said in California. Dark-eyed surfer dude shading his swarthy brow -- peer into the pomegranate clouds of sunset. This rainy eastern beach chills me to the bone.

2. I wish I could look
to where the lonely sun
sets in the immense sea --
my thoughts will not stay here, tonight,
nor yet with you, at home;
my restless heart craves stasis, craves
a still, still settling, slow.
My hand commits to paper
what my brain already knows, and hopes,
in dreams I see your dark eyes
in the cloudy twilight shore.

↻...done

posted evening of October 18th, 2009: Respond
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Monday, October 12th, 2009

🦋 The Pekar Project

It was Harvey Pekar's 70th birthday last week -- I missed it -- Happy Birthday, Harvey! At MetaFilter, I find a link to his latest project, biweekly web comix at Smith Magazine's Pekar Project, working with four illustrators. Great stuff, go take a look. To celebrate his birthday, the site inaugurated a gallery of Harvey Heads drawn by different artists; also you can watch video of Pekar's February NYC appearance on the Josh McCutchen Show.

posted evening of October 12th, 2009: Respond
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Saturday, October 10th, 2009

🦋 In the penal colony

What a way to be introduced to a character! From Juan Goytisolo's La guardia:

Recuerdo muy bien la primera vez que lo vi. Estaba sentado en medio del patio, el torso desnudo y las palmas apoyadad en el suelo y reía silenciosamente. Al principio, creí que bostezaba o sufría un tic o del mal de San Vito pero, al llevarme la mano a la frente y remusgar la vista, descubrí que tenía los ojos cerrados y reía con embeleso. ...

El muchacho se había sentado encima de un hormiguero: las hormigas le subían por el pecho; las costillas, los brazos, la espalda; algunas se aventuraban entre las vedijas del pelo, paseaban por su cara, se metían en sus orejas. Su cuerpo bullía de puntos negros y permanecía silencioso, con los párpados bajos.

I remember well the first time I saw him. He was sitting in the middle of the courtyard, his torso naked and his palms resting on the ground, laughing silently. At first, I thought he was yawning or he suffered from a tic or from St. Vitus' Dance; when I raised my hand to my forehead and cleared my view, I found he had his eyes closed and was laughing, in a trance. ...

The kid had sat himself down on top of an anthill: ants were crawling across his chest; his ribs, his arms, his back, some were venturing among his tangled hair, passing over his face, entering into his ears. His body swarmed with dots of black and he remained silent, his eyelids down.

Update: added a little context from the first paragraph.

posted afternoon of October 10th, 2009: 1 response
➳ More posts about Cuentos Españoles/Spanish Stories

Sunday, October 4th, 2009

🦋 Frivolity

He notado que esas personas hablan con la mayor liviandad, sin tener en cuenta que hablar es también ser.

I've noticed that these people [European colonists] speak with the greatest frivolity, without taking into account that to speak is also to be.

posted evening of October 4th, 2009: Respond

🦋 More Spanish stories

I've been poking around in Cuentos Españoles this weekend -- I got another similar book yesterday, Cuentos en Español (Penguin, 1999)* and the story that really caught my attention was La indiferencia de Eva, by Soledad Puértolas. The pace and rhythm of the story are almost perfect and I'm finding it easy to identify with her characters, to place myself in her scenes. I would like recommendations for further reading of her work, if any of you have read it -- she has several novels and collections of short stories, though I am finding nothing in translation.**

* and apparently Penguin also published bilingual collections of Spanish stories in 1966 and 1972 -- I'm surprised at how much of this I am finding!

** This is wrong -- the novel Bordeaux has been translated; and at least Google Books thinks that one of her stories appears in the collection After Henry James, though I haven't been able to find any reference to this collection elsewhere.

posted evening of October 4th, 2009: 2 responses
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