“Apostrophes to the natural world: Inventive translations of ‘polyglot wordplay and glossolalia’” by Philip Ross Bullock (TLS; En)

I am convinced that Robert Chandler is a magician, because his work of translation is impeccably fascinating. Apologies for over-quoting (it’s paywalled, and not everyone knows how to go through, hence the lengthy excerpt), but it’s worth it.

Robert Chandler’s juxtaposition of the two poets in Birds, Beasts and a World Made New is an adroit one. Both were drawn to modern art. Both spoke to the apocalyptic upheavals of their age (one section of the anthology is entitled “War, Revolution, Civil War and Famine”). Both were famed for their experimental command of verse form, from the unpunctuated suppleness of Apollinaire’s Alcohols, or the playful visuality of his Calligrammes, to the polyglot wordplay and glossolalia of Khlebnikov’s “Incantation by Laughter” and transrational poetry.

Inventiveness abounds in these translations (and in the imaginative imitations and homages by other translators that Chandler generously includes). His version of Apollinaire’s “Exiled Grace” includes a deft macaronic half-rhyme between arc-en-ciel and “sad exile”, and wittily renders au vent de bise as “in the breeze”. The fluid seven lines of Khlebnikov’s “Cricket International” are compressed into a rhythmic quatrain of (mostly) dactylic bimeter:

Grasshopper-gracehoper,

Joy us with evensong.

Wing it, swing it,

Creak out your dickinsong.

As the last word suggests, Chand­ler’s ear is equally attuned to a pleiad of English-language poets. His commentaries cite John Clare, Walt Whitman and even Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and W.B. Yeats provides a ready solution to an intractable couplet of abstract French. ©

What I find sad is that I can’t see the choirs singing carols anywhere in Cambridge anymore. It is conceivable, of course, that I just haven’t come across them, as they might perform in the centre (the Grand Arcade and such), but the thing is that before 2018/19 I had observed them (and enjoyed their performance, no matter how amateur) quite regularly...

Christmas Tree-2024: preparations (En)

I have to admit, the older I get the more I perceive decorating the Christmas Tree as one of the most important challenges of the year, which can be compared with any elaborate academic tasks. I *nearly* succeeded today, but the tree needs a bit more zhuzh, which I’ll certainly give it later tonight. All the usual pictures I, most likely, will take tomorrow, without huffing and puffing after completing the chores.

 

(Feat. Rudolf Bernhard Willmann (1868-1919), Christmas Tree Decorated with Lights)

So, husband generated* a new image of yours truly with the help of a new Apple AI, and let me tell you that this new “me” ultimately looks like an unloved child of the Teletubbies, pretty much all the evil characters from the original Toy Story and the main heroine from the recent sci fi horror M3GAN.

__________

* Many of you sadly have already been introduced to a variety of his artistic endeavours

You simply cannot envisage the best birthday without a cake (Sissi torte, dedicated to that one demure Empress of Austria, thanks to Kipferl yet again), the card and lovely greetings and messages from friends and family. And then, there were festivities at the restaurant with the nicest food (Basque cheesecake, I see you!) and the loveliest Cantabrigian ever: a proper way to celebrate 49, methinks.

 49.

I stop reposting from this particular outlet a while ago, but I still make one exception for Carol Rumens’s column, and this time she’s analysing—sublimely as usual—one of my favourite winter poems by Keats.

The title-lines, first: the lack of a hyphen between “drear” and “nighted” adds to the slow weight of the words opening stanzas one and two. Keats’s diction throughout is inventive: he makes bold use of gerunds, or “verbal nouns”, such as “thawings”, “bubblings”, “forgetting”, “fretting”. Each stanza encloses a triad of end-rhymes, consisting, in the first and third, of verb-and-object (“undo them”, “through them”, “glue them” and “feel it”, “heal it” “steel it”). The energy of the rhyme-scheme springs from folk song and folk-speech foundations. ©

Christmas Feast at Clare-2024

And the feast was marvellous, and the Tree was fabulous, and that one Fellow of Clare was merry.

Eldritch Elf-2024: in Cambridge! (En)

Heartfelt thanks to my Eldritch Elf this year, The Innsmouth Book Club! Rob and Tim, not only do you have one of the greatest podcasts out there, but also give the best presents! You made my 2024 much happier. Hooray!

“What Does a Translator Do?” by Max Norman (The New Yorker; En)

It depends on how we define sense in this case.

It’s not just that translation was called something different: it also meant something different. In Searls’s account, which draws heavily on the work of the twentieth-century French theorist Antoine Berman, translation was first a matter of content, and only later a matter of form. Cicero believed that sense should be translated for sense, not “counting out words for the reader,” but “weighing them out.” A few centuries later, St. Jerome, author of the great Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible, argued that translations of the mysteries should be word for word, but everything else should be, like Cicero advocated, sense for sense. There was an easy confidence in antiquity, and all the way up to the Renaissance, that translation was indeed possible—though the more modern language may need to be stretched to accommodate the semantic richness, and classical authority, of the original. ©

В твиттере прямо сейчас прекрасное:

Дэвид Айк (королевские оборотни-рептилоиды™, если кто забыл) обвиняет в дезинформации Алекса Джонса (создатель Infowars, прародитель практически всей конспирологической пасты в инете за последние лет 20, а то и больше, в короне из фольги).

...Теперь я видела все. ©

“What Alice Munro Knew” by Giles Harvey (The New York Times; En)

Yes, in cases like this one it’s hardly possible to separate the art from the artist, no matter how hard you try. Frankly, as a reader, you don’t need to acquiesce if you feel that the art is forever tainted. 

Munro’s response made it clear that she [the daughter—E.T.] was right to be afraid. It was “as if she had learned of an infidelity,” Andrea recalled in her essay for The Star. Munro left Fremlin and fled to their condo on Vancouver Island. When Andrea visited her there, she was amazed by Munro’s self-pity. “She believed my father had made us keep the secret in order to humiliate her,” Andrea wrote. “She then told me about other children Fremlin had ‘friendships’ with, emphasizing her own sense that she, personally, had been betrayed.” Fremlin, meanwhile, sent a series of unhinged letters to the family, in which he acknowledged the abuse but claimed that it was Andrea who seduced him.

But of course she proceeded with the publication. Self-pity can be strategic, see.

“Why the novel matters” by Deborah Levy (En)

What a load of pretentious drivel with lots of studious anaphoras, too. If you are not a philologist, you love novels as a major genre mostly because you want to escape reality. If you are a philologist, you love to dissect them (not so much as the time progresses). I thought that she, as a novelist, knew better.

Приехал один из заказанных учебников с упражнениями по русскому как иностранному, и я чувствую некоторое одушевление (дано забытые ощущения, признаться) от того, что у меня по вторникам теперь снова занятия. Потихоньку разбираю книжные завалы для чтения, но там задач на многие месяцы (если не годы) вперед. Как обычно перед др, ощущается некоторая выпотрошенность.

I was thinking again about the tumult around this olfactory dissertation: I read the abstract, and, whilst it does look rather dubious, I feel like criticising it I basically criticise my own PhD, which was equally full of buzzwords and overall not that great either: I can’t.

Crimble Crumble-2024 (En)

It’s that time of year again, when we make Crimble Crumble: we’ve been making this particular Pret recipe since 2015? 2016? and once it’s done, we begin our Christmas countdown—with making Stollen next, installing the Tree etc. This year’s Crumble turned out to be mellow, full of mulled spices and delicious mincemeat, which is a blessing for a dark stormy night.

Random tutti quanti (mostly extracts from my ramblings around X; En)

To the recent debacle about the olfactory PhD*:

I am glad that 21 years ago when I defended my PhD thesis (also in literature), there wasn’t social media as powerful as Twitter is now. I am absolutely certain I wouldn’t be able to handle that amount of vitriol from complete strangers gracefully.

I thought—arguably, that was silly naïveté from my part—that you must separate the work from its creator if you want to start a discussion on the subject. Boy oh boy, was I wrong.

_____________

*I’ve already seen some hectic suggestions that the entire thing is a prank, which, potentially, could be the case, but as of now I consider it to be genuine. We’ll see.

UPD. She’s real.

***

Apparently, the main topic of the BBC Today Programme (which was, in fact, aired today) was how to cook porridge when you are on a tight budget, and the presenters and studio guests went full blown “Catherine Tate gooseberry cinnamon yoghurt from Waitrose” mode: it was so unreal, tone-deaf and ridiculous that at first I thought it was a prank, yet they were dead serious; I prefer my porridge with a sprinkle of tahini, Demerara sugar, a generous dollop of Greek yoghurt and organic Acacia honey, they said.

GIRL, WHY NOT WITH A WHITE TRUFFLE AND AN EDELWEISS FROM THE MATTERHORN ON TOP.

“The Brothers Grimm Were Dark for a Reason” by Jennifer Wilson (The New Yorker)

Because this is the only way of doing it:

Then, there was the matter of the Grimms’ language—sparse, hectic, visceral, unfiltered. In the preface, the brothers boasted of the collection’s fidelity to their sources: “No circumstance has been poeticized, beautified, or altered.” Well, that much was clear, complained the Grimms’ old friend Clemens Brentano, who thought they went too far. “If you want to display children’s clothes,” Brentano wrote, “you can do that with fidelity without bringing out an outfit that has all the buttons torn off, dirt smeared on it, and the shirt hanging out of the pants.” But the Grimms wanted to preserve the culture of the common folk, not to make the folk sound cultured. ©

Вдруг поняла, что мне напоминает движ в сторону блогинга на сабстаке — жж на заре времен, только на этот раз с относительно-вменяемой монетизацией и аккуратно таргетированным вовлечением заинтересованной аудитории.

Issues from the hand of God, the simple soul’
To a flat world of changing lights and noise,
To light, dark, dry or damp, chilly or warm;
Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs,
Rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys,
Advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm,
Retreating to the corner of arm and knee,
Eager to be reassured, taking pleasure
In the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree,
Pleasure in the wind, the sunlight and the sea ©

Presents Galore Christmas Fair-2024 (En: photos and a video)

 And a few misc pictures and a video from the event featured in the previous post:

Presents Galore Christmas Fair-2024 (En)

And here we go again—visiting Presents Galore Christmas Fair at one of the Racecourse venues in neighbouring Newmarket (I still find it oddly fascinating that Newmarket is already in Suffolk, although the actual time getting there by train is basically the same as going to Ely).

Unlike last year with its chilly and crisp sunny weather (a rarity: we live without the Golden Orb most of the year), this time our walk went through Jamesian landscapes—empty fields (the horses had a day off, as we figured out), misty horizon and the greyish silhouettes of a few trees.

On the contrary, the Fair was as joyous and lush as it was the last time: frankly, we were lost among ceramic gingerbread houses, Nutcrackers, quilted goods for Agas, Barbour gloves and scarves, incredibly beautiful equestrian leather accessories (tell me you are in a prosperous middle class place without telling me etc) and so on, and so forth.

The aroma of freshly made mulled wine and potpourris made from oranges, cloves, cinnamon sticks and you name it was everywhere: at the end of the day we ourselves brought home the scent of the upcoming festivities, which is nice.

This is one of the darkest days in modern British history.

Assisted dying bill was approved by the UK Parliament: all hail Canada. All doors for coercion have been widely open (see Canadian MAID). All kind of sacrifices are not enough for “our precious NHS.” And that laughter in the Chamber afterwards: they simply couldn’t help themselves.

В др Блока не хочется писать вообще ничего поверхностно-«культурного» (в мессенджере фейсбучная френдесса прислала ссылку-напоминание о дате, а то я бы, наверное, так и пропустила) —покойник к концу жизни от пафоса устало отмахивался. Вспомнился темный остроугольный Петербург, моя первая научная командировка и наши с Саней настоящие блоковские хожения по Невскому. Лучшего оммажа поэту и представить себе нельзя.

Из хорошего: много читала сегодня. Подписалась на сабстак Хелен Плакроуз (той самой, которая приняла участие в нашумевших пародийных Grievance  Studies с Богосяном и Линдси) — умное, отстраненное, немного шизоидное и герметичное спокойное чтение о культурных войнах (остроактуальное для меня в силу многих причин). Продолжу завтра.

Лингвистическое-неожиданное

Как выяснилось, в английском есть своя версия борьбы бордюра с поребриком — kerb (British En) vs curb (American En). Упреждая вопросы: да, не знала, да, даже после 12 лет в стране. Век живи.

Nothings and triviality vs losses and findings

And just like that, I lost one of my favourite earrings. I was out and about, so there’s no way I would be able to find it. So bloody stupid and sad.

On a brighter note, I was going home and there was that one young gay man (somewhat flamboyant, I dare say) who was running and talking on his phone, and I gave him some space on the narrow Cambridge street, and he quickly responded, “Aw, thank you, Queenie,” and, basically I will be her until the end of this day, I guess.

“Gothic Crossroads” (Манчестер, 25-27 июля 2025 г.)

Я немного застряла, и пора встряхиваться. В Манчестере следующим летом ( в июне) будет конференция по готике с хорошим названием Gothic Crossroads (спасибо твиттеру: там больше научной инфы), и я думаю податься. И тем много, и выбрать есть из чего.

“How a Scientific Dispute Spiralled Into a Defamation Lawsuit” (The New Yorker, September Issue)

Yeah, sure: “I was framed. Also, my colleagues’ dog ate my homework and all my research papers altogether.” She seems insufferable. (A shame I overlooked this article two months ago).

Her most robust explanation for the malfeasance is that she may have been set up by a conspiracy of former research assistants, resentful co-authors, and Data Colada. Eight pages of the report are devoted to this “malicious actor” theory. Any such party would have required access to both her Qualtrics account and her hard drive [Are you fucking kidding me—E.T.]. The same party, or perhaps an additional one, would also have needed access to either the personal computer of a former research assistant or to the research assistant herself, who long ago left academia. In the latter case, the report continues, “they would have needed the ability to convince [the research assistant] to collude with them in falsifying data, and the ability to either instruct her in how to falsify the data or obtain the data from her, falsify it, and then return it to her before she forwarded it to us in May 2022 (accomplishing all of this in the relatively short timeframe—one week—between our request for [the research assistant’s] records from this study and her submission of those records).” It further notes that this would have required not just “great expertise” but the kind of perfect timing found only in “Ocean’s Eleven.” Gino’s insistence that she was framed, the report concludes with some bitterness, “leads us to doubt the credibility of her written and oral statements to this Committee more generally.” ©

*Watching the trailer to a new reality show, Meet The Rees Moggs, on Discovery +*

He’s that type of person who will be very polite with you, simultaneously mistaking you for a freshly painted wall, because you don’t exist as a human in his universe and his courtesy is just a body reflex developed as a response to compulsory contacts with servants and occasional hoi polloi. The kids are cute though.

“Ripley” (Netflix, 2024)

Наткнулась тут на рецензию, озаглавленную «Почему “Рипли” не стал шедевром»: старомодная заносчивость заголовка (кинокритик на платформе, к которой «припадают» и проч.: дела давно минувших дней) заставила вспомнить цитату из почти что забытого, а когда-то сверхактуального Бурдье — «нет такого вопроса, который не был бы переистолкован в зависимости от интересов тех, кому он задается».

Интерес, в общем, и у критика вполне понятный — скрупулезно перечислить все цитаты, явные и скрытые (подростки и молодящаяся публика называют их теперь пасхалками), все сценические приемы, все режиссерские идеи, чтобы закольцевать рецензию, сдержанно похвалив «многоуровневость», которая, увы, не избежала некоторых «но» и «однако»: критик всегда знает (или предполагает, что знает), как лучше.

Из главной на сегодня триады адаптаций самого известного романа Хайсмит эта показалась мне самой лучшей: она ощущается ближе к тексту, чем две предыдущие — да, полные солнца и обворожительной красоты главных героев (Делон, Роне, Лафоре, а потом Деймон, Лоу и Пэлтроу — слишком безупречные, как будто сошедшие с обложек «Нью-Йоркера» или всех доинтернетных каталогов тяжелого неброского люкса вместе взятых), но схематичные, но слишком предсказуемые и обусловленные эстетикой и психотехникой нуара.

Ну а празднование дня философии хотелось бы завершить цитатой, которая, в общем, пропедевтически-идеально описывает и целеустремленность, и целеполагание:

- Берите подушку. Еще что? Да... Постойте, бывают с вами, Шатов, минуты вечной гармонии?

- Знаете, Кириллов, вам нельзя больше не спать по ночам. (с)

Так пусть следствием нашей бессоницы станет монадология, логико-философский трактат, разговор на проселочной дороге, пир и проч.; остальное детали. Главное — не впадать в продолжительное уныние и двигаться — все равно куда, но брести, желательно не слишком часто прерываясь на остановки.

Pale, beyond porch and portal,

Crowned with calm leaves, she stands

Who gathers all things mortal

With cold immortal hands ©

A new book from the BL Weird subscription, and look at it! A mystery novel by the one and only Marjorie Bowen, a female writer about the Supernatural from the Edwardian era, with an intro written by the legendary Michael Dirda!

Just to remind you: the best ever publisher Hippocampus Press released two books by Marjorie Bowen, “The Grey Chamber,” a collection of stories and essays from a female classic of Supernatural, and a horror novel, “The Devil Snar’d: Novels, Appreciations, and Appendices.” You can buy them on the HP website!

Also, the great Bitesized narration of Bowen’s classical ghost story, The Crown Derby Plate: enjoy!

In connection with this, I was reminded of an old Soviet anecdote.

An old Russian aristocrat, who is a granddaughter of a Decembrist*, is hearing a big fuss outside and sends her maid to find out what’s going on. The maid comes back and exclaims with excitement:

“The revolution has begun, Madam!”

“The revolution!” joyously replies the lady, “how absolutely delightful! My sweet Grandpa was also a revolutionary! What do they want exactly?”

“They want no rich, Madam,” the maid says.

“Oh,” the lady responds hesitantly, “How very weird... My Grandpa wanted no poor...”

___________

* The Decembrist Revolt was a failed coup d’état led by liberal military and political dissidents against the Russian Empire in 1825 (Wiki)

I adore VBP* for being both intentionally and unintentionally funny, but jokes aside, the festive season in Cambridge almost always looks mildly atrocious.

Yes, the tree will be lit up in the evening, and you will spot the same dull decor on Rose Crescent and around the centre, yet it never manages to reach the point where the city feels joyful.

After a few mighty American corporations arrived to Cambs, the city (but, apparently, not the City Council, lol) got a bit of money to splurge on, hence a bit of sparkle around the Railway Station, but other than that, it’s not great (see Norwich by comparison and you’ll understand what I mean). Oh, and don’t listen to those who tell you that “Cambridge has always been minimalistic.” Nah, it ain’t that: just a usual lazy mess. AND the city is VERY dark in the evening.

_____________

* The VBP guy posted a pic with a miserably looking Christmas Tree on Market Square

“The best spooky tales to read this season” by Michael Dirda (WP)

Believe it or not, but I saved the link shared by the best ever publisher Hippocampus Press a while ago (before Hallowe’en, I believe!), got distracted by something fairly mundane and completely forgot to post it in time! But better later than never, so here we go: a brilliant (as usual) analysis of a bunch of horror editions, old and new, by Michael Dirda, including the most recent releases by fantastic Hippocampus Press, “The Voice in the Night: Best Weird Stories of William Hope Hodgson” and “Where the Silent Ones Watch”:

Though best known for its authoritative editions of Lovecraft, Hippocampus Press also issues work by other grandmasters of supernatural literature, most recently “The Voice in the Night: Best Weird Stories of William Hope Hodgson,” edited by S.T. Joshi. No one who has read this collection’s title story — I first encountered it in a high school English textbook — ever forgets “The Voice in the Night.” On a starless night in the Pacific, a becalmed sailing ship is unexpectedly hailed by a voice from the darkness. The unseen man in a small boat begs for some food but refuses to approach too closely. Eventually, the voice recounts how he and his fiancée were shipwrecked and saved from death only when their raft drifted to a nearby island, much of it covered by a “gray, lichenous fungus.” It would be unfair to say more, except that this is a tale of equal parts horror and pathos.

LP 6: call for papers is open!

Cfp - done; the respective timeline for publications - done; the first feedback from the authors - check. That was a great but a loooong day!

The season is officially open: first mulled wine and mince pies (Marks & Engels have outdone themselves this year: their mince pies with caramelised brown sugar are incredible!)

С.А. Светличная (1940 - 2024)

Умерла Светлана Светличная.

Кто-то сразу вспомнит советскую фам фаталь «под Ким Новак» Анну Сергеевну с гэгами из «Бриллиантовой руки», а позже ее появление в бесчисленных ток-шоу на гиньоль-тв — полубезумное, неуместное и несчастливое (шум и блестки не прощают старости и болезней), — но лучше все же не забывать, кем она по-настоящему была — актрисой из того, старого поколения, ушедшего теперь уже безвозвратно.

Ее лучшая роль для меня — молчаливой девушки из одновременно неореалистического и годаровского ноктюрна Михаила Калика «Любить»: киноволшебство, в котором отчуждение и тоска сняты так, что слова в их изображении были и правда излишни.

Светлая ей память и Царствие Небесное.

"Ghost Stories of an Antiquary" by Nunkie Theatre: soon in Cambridge!

As this December marks the 120th anniversary of the publication of M R James’s “Ghost Stories of an Antiquary,” brilliant Robert Lloyd Parry aka Nunkie Theatre will perform all eight stories from the collection over two nights in Cambridge, Friday 20 and Saturday 21! 

I was lucky enough to grab two tickets, and, as a result, L. an I are going on December 20, and I simply cannot wait!

“In the fray: How to teach contemporary literature” by Tim Parks (TLS)

In other words, history will decide on its own accord, which has nothing to do with your best effort to give a full picture of the current literary process (mainstream and not):

Certainly, there are endless books being written. Worldwide, more than 100,000 novels are published in English each year. Even the prize-winners run into scores. So the first challenge is which authors to teach – the celebrities, those who sold most? – and the second what to say about them. “Here, if we could recognize it”, wrote Virginia Woolf. contemplating new titles in a bookshop, “lies some poem, or novel, or history which will stand up and speak with other ages about our age when we lie prone and silent…”. But it was “oddly difficult”, she continued, to say “which are the real books and what it is that they are telling us, and which are the stuffed books which will come to pieces when they have lain about for a year or two”.

So, if we teach contemporary literature, we must do so with the sobering awareness that we may well be teaching also-rans. Any number of authors as celebrated in their day as Salman Rushdie or Zadie Smith are today have long been forgotten. Who was reputed “the most published man of the nineteenth century” and “the most popular writer of his time”? Not Dickens, but G. M. W. Reynolds. Hardly a household name. ©

New Susanne Clarke’s book is here: it’s a short story set in the same universe as Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

Who said that November had to be grey all along?

A bit more King’s Lynn (photos)

King’s Lynn’s tutti quanti: gargoyles, tilted Tudor houses, Gothic churches in dusk etc.