Union

I've taken to playing piano in the student Union on a big Baldwin grand just sitting in the corner there. I've done it a few times and not gotten dirty looks yet. This is good because I have to be unembarrassed about playing in public.

Getting Descartes wrong

Getting Descartes wrong (from Stanford Enc of Philosophy:

How could interpreters get Descartes so wrong? One recent explanation suggests that many post-modern “theorists” have absorbed their Descartes at second hand, and the same explanation might be extended to others who invoke Descartes after only cursory engagement with this writings. As the literary historian Michael Moriarty explains, leading French theorists such as Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault would have, in the course of their French educations, “received a solid grounding in philosophy, and in Descartes' works in particular” (Moriarty 2003, 52). They then use Descartes as a stalking horse. Moriarty suggests that many readers of Lacan and Foucault have not received the same education in philosophy or in Descartes. Such individuals, “who read Lacan or Foucault without, or before, reading Descartes, thus imbibe a certain perception of Descartes, more negative, perhaps, than the authors themselves, writing against the grain of their own culture, may have intended to convey” (2003, 53). The implication is that Lacan and Foucault engaged Descartes from a knowledge of his writings, whereas others who lack such knowledge misunderstand the value of such genuine engagement and take away misunderstood implications. This would also explain how Descartes could be charged with denying the emotions even though he published an entire book on the Passions, and how the implications of this book might be overlooked by someone eager to find a famous target to disagree with.

How often does this happen, not just with Descartes but with almost everyone? In other words, someone has not read Descartes, or Foucault, but maybe a chapter on Foucault in a book on literary theory. Or maybe they've read something about Derrida's view of Husserl. I'm not putting myself forth as some great expert. I know nothing about Husserl. But I probably wouldn't take his name in vain when writing about something else.

Translation Workshop

I will offer a virtual translation workshop, beginning on the first of April and ending on the final day of that month. (Virtual workshop, not virtual translation.) If you are interested, please send me a note by email. To qualify for this, you must know a language from which to translate into English, well enough in your own judgment, and have a project in mind. I will accept the first 10 people that write me.

I will accept, in payment, the amount you think this is worth to you. Maybe you think it's worth $20, or $200. I will work with you on a few poems and give you readings to read. I'll have a private blog set up for it.

We will cover some prosody, some translation theory, some poetics. If this works out it will be a regular thing.

Some other things I don't like

I really don't like reading other people's scholarship, unless it is of the highest quality. It really drains my energy to read. A lot of the draining effect of teaching is having to read student work. I know this sounds bad, but why are you tired after reading a set of student papers? If you read some Roland Barthes during that same amount of time, you will be energized with new ideas, but students rarely give you that. Reading bad poetry or fiction does the same thing. That is why we are paid to do certain things. Listening to other people's talks is not easy for me either. I always think that my talk would be better.

(A guy I won't name, a few years ago, asked me for a blurb for his book, but told me not to read the whole thing. He didn't seem to have enthusiasm for his own project, which was somewhat repetitive from numerous previous books. I could not refuse, but still...)

I know this is a significant insight. I've formulated it before, paraphrasing Sartre: "l'enfer, c'est l'écriture des autres." It's not that I'm so brilliant and looking down on everything else. I feel the same way about my own music. I'd rather compose an inferior song than listen to your inferior song, or even your song that's a little better than mine. I'd prefer actively to create my own things. Unless your name is Cole Porter or George Gershwin or Harold Arlen or Jerome Kern or Richard Rodgers or Duke Ellington or Billy Strayhdorn or Johnny Green*, I am going to get more benefit out of my own efforts than from yours.

___

*Not an exhaustive list, but you know what I mean.

Improv

Now I'm trying to play my compositions and improvise on the chord changes a bit. It's not very hard to play something that will fit, more or less, but only a few isolated phrases sound any good at all. My left hand is pretty good at moving from one chord to the next while my right hand does its thing. I guess for the first or second day of really trying this I didn't do so bad. I'm trying to have better comping rhythms in the left hand as well, and to throw in some two handed chords.

Not looking at random blogs all day has freed up some time for piano playing and running, and even forced my self to do more writing of Lorca III.

I also came up with this plan:

The idea: write songs and record amateur cd for Christmas, 2016

1. Have the recording done. (Final point.) CDs produced and ready to send out. Dec. 17, 2016

2. Burn CDs with art work. December

3. Mix digital files. December

4. Learn enough recording engineering to tell engineer what I want. Record in studio. (Oct /Nov)

A. Vocals B. Piano C. Drums D. Trumpet on two songs

5. Have piano parts written and learned for all songs, with good chords; figure out how to record drum track to go along with it, mostly brushes. (Sept.)

6. Learn to play piano sufficiently well to accompany self

7. Have confidence playing and singing all 8 songs.

8. Finish graphic art-work for cds: pencil drawings?

9. Choose 8 songs to work on for CD

10. Write 12 songs with lyrics / have written versions of all songs (basic version)

11. Work on drawing. Investigate cd cover art printing programs.

12. Learn all 12 keys:

C / F / Bb / Eb / Ab / Db / Gb
B / E / A / D / G

13. Begin to compose songs and play non-travel day.

Help:

Hire engineer for recording. Singing instructor. Advice on project: technical, musical. Have Julia record trumpet parts

Do myself:

write all songs and music / perform all parts on piano, drums, vocal / do artwork and graphic design

Challenges:

musical / technological / psychological / physical / make the songs not all sound the same?

Some Things I Don't Like

I don't like, in translation, the "domestic residue." That's the idea of putting in some references that only have meaning to the target audience, like a Lorca poem alluding to an American Blues tune.

I don't like translationese: the use of an unidiomatic construction that is the result of the translator reflecting the source language too directly.

I don't like stuff that's "stuffing" or explanatory. Don't say "full of wood" when the original says "of wood."

I don't particularly like archaism.

I don't like added punctuation that wants to clarify but ends up blocking rhythms.

I don't like inappropriate registers, either too high or low.

I don't like anything that makes the translation blander. If there's a pine don't make it "tree."

I don't like enjambments that are gratuitous: having nothing to do with anything in the original.

y así sucesivamente....


There's a lot I don't like that puts me sorely at odds with contemporary translation theories and practices. I think I can articulate why I don't like all this, and justify my own preferences. Some of it is "common sense." The rest is simply a fact about myself: I happen to like limpid purity. It is the same reason I like classic prose style rather than signposting my readers to death.

So my guilty pleasure is beauty itself, I guess. I think that's a word you won't find in all of Lawrence Venuti's translation theory. I give priority to poetics over translation theory, but then I must also say that my poetics is my own. It's pretty much "some don'ts for imagists." You know, direct treatment of the thing, the rhythm of the musical phrase, no "dim lands of peace."