Dostoyevsky
Finished Notes from the Underground, in the original, some two weeks ago. I can't really write anything meaningful about it. Suffice it to say, it was phenomenally powerful, even though it was my third time reading it. It has been many years. As despicable as the main character is, I saw myself in him more than once. I suspect this is true of more people than would be willing to admit it.
Georgia vs. Russia
Sad. Minds, and pens, far greater than mine have provided plenty of commentary. I have nothing to add. This seems to me to be on the money. It actually proposes a well-defined course of action, and a good one at that. Too bad we will never come anywhere close to doing this.
Translation
Finally started my long-delayed translation of St. Exupéry's Courrier Sud. Unbelievably difficult. When reading a novel in a foreign language for the story -- granted, the most superficial way to read it, but also the most common I suspect -- we don't realize just how much we get from context and how many subtleties we lose. When translating, every last bit of minutiae is indispensable, and then you have render it into something resembling decent prose. It took me an hour to get through two paragraphs of the opening chapter. This is going to be a long project. I will buy a beer -- nay, a single-malt scotch -- to anyone who comes up with an acceptable translation of this sentence, especially the second clause:
Sur nos fronts cette lumière de lampe qui ne livre pas les objets mais les compose, nourrit de matière tendre chaque chose.Back on the 26th.
2 comments:
Notes From Underground would repay an annual reading, I think. At least it would be quicker to get through than The Brothers Karamazov, which I could enjoy once a year. I finished up Notes last week, and agree with your assessment.
The dictionary didn't help as much as I hoped with the French sentence. I looked up livre and tendre, and confirmed that matière is a cognate, but then I was left with a somewhat mechanical first draft:
Before us the headlight glow which did not so much reveal objects as compose them, filled with every kind of matter.
Perhaps better than a computer translation, but hardly scotchworthy.
Steve,
Ah -- your translation is a perfect example of the overriding importance of context! Had I included the previous sentence, it would have become clear that "lumiere de lampe" is figurative and refers to the moon in the previous sentence. Sorry about that.
T.
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