Carter Kaplan's Query

Kaplan's Query: "I wonder, could I possibly persuade/cajole/grovel/beg you to write about Emanations: Chorus Pleiades? You are denying the world your insights!"

Reply: "I would gladly write about that issue of Emanations, if I had the time. I hope to have the time during the winter break."

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

Harold Bloom returns

Harold Bloom died Monday, at 89, still inveighing against his enemies:

[Those whom] he called the "School of Resentment" -- critics and scholars he had previously described, in a 1991 Paris Review interview, as "displaced social workers" and "a rabblement of lemmings." (Dwight Garner, "A literary colossus," NYT, October 17, 2019)

I especially like the "displaced social workers" -- for I've long longed for the right expression (I've used "sociologists"), so I'm glad someone has already been there, and left planted there a sign for the ill-adversed . . .

Bill Vallicella Remembers His Teacher John Niemeyer Findlay

In a recent post, my friend Bill Vallicella remembers his teacher John  Niemeyer Findlay for the words that his teacher wrote:

For it is not only Findlay's characteristic patterns once so amply instantiated here below that I now ponder lovingly, but the actual words he wrote, many of them printed, some of them hand-written, that strikingly singular voluminous flow of Baroque articulation so beautifully expressive of a wealth of thoughts. In his books, I have the man still, and presumably at his best, even if he himself, long dead as an instance, has made the transcensive move from the Cave's chiaroscuro to the limpid light wherein he now, something of a Platonic Form himself, beholds the forma formarum, the Form of all Forms.

I won't claim to understand everything Bill has written here, but what interests me is Bill's preference for the particular man, John  Niemeyer  Findlay, as that particular man's actually expressed words reveal him in that particularity.

I do have a question, though. Is Bill's point about Findlay best expressed as "the actual words he wrote," or would Bill's point about Findlay be better expressed as "the words he actually wrote"?

Each expression lends itself to misunderstanding.

MacLeish's Literary Awards

Archibald MacLeish

In MacLeish's government work, we have seen that he succeeded as a public figure even on the international stage, but how did he fare as a poet and writer?

The query nearly sounds absurd. MacLeish received three Pulitzer Prizes for literary works: Conquistador (1932, 1933), Collected Poems 1917-1952 (1952, 1953), and J.B. (1958, 1959). Other awards for literary works include the National Book Award for Poetry (Collected Poems, 1917-1952, 1953), the Bollingen Prize in Poetry (Collected Poems, 1917-1952, 1953), and the Tony Award for Best Play (J.B., 1958, 1959) (Frank, 2011, 8). MacLeish's early, lyrical poems from the mid-nineteen twenties are much the source of his poetic reputation and are notable for what David Barber terms their "lyrical grace and . . . tone of muted horror at the human experience of spinning on our small planet through the dark and empty universe," as in "You, Andrew Marvell" and other fine lyrics, including, "Ars Poetica," "The End of the World," "Eleven," and "'Not Marble Nor the Gilded Monuments'" (Barber, 1999).

There is more, but you get the point.

More Than Mere Ambiguity?

Cleanth Brooks

Carter Kaplan and I had a humorous exchange of views on the meaning of poetry. He had offered a well-written, three-paragraph anecdote on talking with his father and Cleanth Brooks about poetry and lit-crit theory, to which I responded:

I like the way rhyme and alliteration transform ordinary observations into extraordinary observations, regardless of their truth value.

In short, I like beautiful lies.

Carter retorted: Well, there are values, and then there are virtues...

To which I inquired:

How am I to read the word "then" in Carter's retort?

"Well, there are values, and then there are virtues . . ."

Do I read it temporally (sequence)? Or logically (implication)? Or differentially (contrast)?

He didn't know, he admitted, but went on to make some quite interesting points . . .

Poems: Composing . . . or Decomposing

A friend of mine saw these two moments in the process of composing poetry and wanted to take photos, so here they are:

Composing 1

Composing 2

Both photos reveal a poet at work amending poems that appear to be in the final stages of composition . . . or decomposition.

Robert D. Stevick on Sung-il Lee's Beowulf

Robert D. Stevick

University of Washington

I cited Stevick yesterday in words of high praise for Lee's Beowulf, but let me add a few more, these on how perfect Lee's translation choices have been. According to Stevick:

Nothing gets in the way [of the poem]. The commonest impediments to successful translation have been theories of this and that, High Principles to be upheld, or just romantic notions about "olde tyme" English poetry. Sometimes it is a choice to imitate the general sound of the original text -- two half-lines separated by syntax but linked by alliteration. The one successful instance came many, many years ago from Charles W. Kennedy, but even this text [by Kennedy] tends to accelerate unfittingly as the rhythm continues unrelenting. Sometimes it is a decision to imitate the blank verse of the Renaissance. Sometimes it may be choice of a verse-form such as nine-syllable lines defended by reasoning rather than readability. Sung-Il Lee's translation is not trammeled in any ways like these. The syllable-count is unpredictable: it is instead the phrasings that embody the verse rhythms. (Robert D. Stevick, "Foreward," in Sung-il Lee, Beowulf in Parallel Texts, Cascade Books, Eugene, Oregon, 2017, p. ix)

Just the other day, I was discussing with Bill Vallicella the virtue of counting syllables vs. the virtue of measuring phrases. We didn't use exactly those terms, but that's what we were getting at. Stevick clearly comes down on the side of phrasings . . .in this instance, anyway.

Vindication on Catcher in the Rye!

A. Scott Berg

Wikipedia

In the NYT weekend edition for July 8-9 (2017), A. Scott Berg gives his answers in "By the Book," and I feel vindicated, for when he was asked this question:

Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel you were supposed to like, and didn't? Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing?

He answered:

"The Catcher in the Rye." I don't want to sound like a "phony," but I didn't like it when I was 16; and I didn't like it when I picked it up again 50 years later . . . and couldn't finish it.

As readers of my blog know, I also dislike the book, so much so that I wrote this poem when Salinger died:

Requiem for J. D. S.

It came to me the other day,
Just when you died -- I had to say --
"Hmm, that's a shame. Not young, but full
Of unkept promise plumbable."

With that, a shrug, and tearless eyes,
I met your overdue demise;
My wife's response was just, you know,
"I thought he died a while ago."

Your life, a shabby subterfuge,
Your death, unreal, not dark or huge,
No shock of it to register --
Except but where it did occur.

You'll also find this poem in my recent book of poems, Radiant Snow. And yes, I'm borrowing from Updike.

Merely a Mirror on the Wall?

Mere Mirror?

Amazon

and here

Some time back, I read Martin Seay's novel The Mirror Thief, which I delighted in, so I left a message of appreciation on Seay's website for his having written such a wonderful book, and I shared one of my own poems with him that I thought he might appreciate:

Souvenirs

You look upon the world with antique eyes,
through intense lens, with more than innocence,
but only in this moment circumscribed
by shelves and shelves of other people's lives.
Let's peer into this mirror, you and I,
clear through the old and darkened glass. What past
perhaps reflects obscurely back on one
behind the silver-surfaced other side,
who gazes here with solemn, antique eyes?

He didn't respond to for a while, but he then finally did respond, quite graciously:

Hi Jeffrey --

My name is Martin Seay, and I wrote a book called THE MIRROR THIEF that you read . . . oh, probably a year ago.

I'm writing because my website -- which has been on the blink -- JUST NOW coughed up the message that you sent upon finishing the book.

Thanks very much for sharing "Souvenirs"! I enjoyed it, and look forward to following the link you sent shortly. It's got some of that incense-shrouded eeriness that one finds in Yeats and Coleridge and Mallarmé, and for which I'm a sucker.

Please accept my apologies for the much-delayed response, and my thanks for reading and for taking the time to write. I'm very gratified that you enjoyed the book!

Hope this finds you well,

Martin

Touched by his (entirely unnecessary) apology, I wrote back to thank him:

Dear Martin,

Thank you for writing back. I suspect your life is rather filled with all sorts of things, so I appreciate your email. I hope you're well and that your book is selling as it deserves.

Since "Souvenirs" was to your taste, you might also appreciate this little lyric:

Vampire

Fine frost that laces window panes,
the icy-blooded vampire’s veins;
seductive, sensual spoor of death,
its frozen, freezing undead breath;
one cold, controlled, alluring art,
its solitary lover’s heart.

There's no mirror in this one, but vampires avoid mirrors anyway, so one of them had to go.

Yours,

Jeffery

PS Note that my name is with "-ery." Everyone has trouble with it . . .

Good to see that some writers write back . . .

Here we go again!

Google Images

I promised I might (but is that a real promise) even post another extract from the recent review by the anonymous reviewer of Baek Minsuk's Sixteen Stories of Believe It or Not Knowledge, a collection of interconnected short stories that my wife and I have translated, so here's that extract from the review:

Overall, . . . the translation is quite fluent, fluid, and fun. The description of the "egg diet" suggested by Believe It or Not magazine . . . is an excellent example of how well the translator renders Minsuk's humor - reminiscent at once of Bolaño, Murakami, and Kafka - in engaging, thoroughly colloquial English.

Humor? Moi? I mean - me? Maybe he meant my wife? Was I in on the joke? Anyway, I now got some other names to look up. Lemme see . . . uhh, Bolaño? Who's he? And what's curly thing crawling over the "n" in his name?

International Authors is calling . . .

IA Logo

If I might  be allowed to do so, I'd like to urge my readers to go take a look at the International Authors site and see what's offered there. I'm not entirely disinterested in this appeal, for I expect that my book of poems will be appearing at that site soon.

Anyway, regardless what you might think of my poetry (when it shows up), there are other writers there to look into, so you might consider sending any avid readers thataway!

Or - given that the holiday season is upon us - consider giving some books as presents.

Folks still do read books, you know.

Don't they?

Translation Evaluation of Baek Minsuk’s Sixteen Stories of Believe It or Not Knowledge

Google Images

My wife and I received some kind words from a reviewer about our recent translation of Baek Minsuk’s Sixteen Stories of Believe It or Not Knowledge:

The translation itself is generally quite impressive. Humor is notoriously difficult to translate, but here the translator makes it clear from the first sentence that we are reading the words of a master humorist, a manic raconteur, and a brilliantly eccentric theorist of contemporary culture. "Having produced everything imaginable," the narrator says, regarding entertainment in the age of the Internet, "humanity has now started to produce things humanly unimaginable." This sentence alone gives some idea of the high quality of the translation: it is both idiomatic and eloquent.

Nice to hear praise like that! I might put up some more in a couple of days, if I have more time . . .

Oh, great, something else to worry about . . .

Leonid Bershidsky

Bloomberg View

Leonid Bershidsky informs me (and several million other people) about the power of AI's neural networks:

Machines also have been getting better at producing literary work. This year, an AI-written novel passed the first round of a Japanese fiction competition.

Thank God, the abomination got no further than passing the first round! Hmm . . . or could I turn this to my benefit? Maybe have some neural network write a first draft of a novel, which I could then rework, rather like what I do as half of a translation team with my wife.

Speaking of which . . . but no, I'll save that for tomorrow.

Revising 'Voldemort'

Voldemort
"I can't hear you . . ."
Google Images

We've recently learned that we've all been mispronouncing What's-His-Name's name, so to do my part in correcting our error, here's how Harry Potter first learns from Hagrid of What's-His-Name:

[Hagrid] sat down, stared into the fire for a few seconds, and then said, "It begins, I suppose, with - with a person called - but it’s incredible yeh don't know his name, everyone in our world knows -"

"Who?"

"Well - I don' like sayin' the name if I can help it. No one does."

"Why not?"

"Gulpin' gargoyles, Harry, people are still scared. Blimey, this is difficult. See, there was this wizard who went . . . bad. As bad as you could go. Worse. Worse than worse. His name was . . ."

Hagrid gulped, but no words came out.

"Could you write it down?" Harry suggested.

"Nah - can't spell it. All right - Moldy Wart." Hagrid shuddered. "Don' make me say it again . . ."

Yes, that's the official pronunciation. You see how wrongly wrong we've been . . .

Lionel Trilling's opening lines to "Of this Time, of that Place"

Lionel Trilling
Wikipedia

One of the first difficult stories I read as a new college student was Lionel Trilling's masterful short story from 1943, "Of this Time, of that Place" (The Three Readers) which opens with these words:

It was a fine September day. By noon it would be summer again but now it was true autumn with a touch of chill in the air. As Joseph Howe stood on the porch of the house in which he lodged, ready to leave for his first class of the year, he thought with pleasure of the long indoor days that were coming. It was a moment when he could feel glad of his profession.

Trilling was not a man to fear an occasional "it" - on this occasion, he uses "it" four times! I might rewrite it as follows:

A fine September day still lingered. Summer would return by noon, but the moment was true autumn with a touch of chill in the air. As Joseph Howe stood on the porch of the house in which he lodged, ready to leave for his first class of the year, he thought with pleasure of the long indoor days that were coming. The moment was one when he could feel glad of his profession.

Does that work better? Or worse? Or just different? Probably worse, an unnecessary editing brought on by my slight dislike of the pronoun "it."

Herman Melville again - First line(s) Bartleby the Scrivener (1853)

Herman Melville
1819-1891
Wikipeda

Bartleby the Scrivener saw the first day of its publication in 1853:

I am a rather elderly man.

Melville penned that line at the age of 34, thereby distancing himself from identification with the narrator. The line is not especially resonant, though it is a sufficiently well-wrought short, concise sentence. The next line has rather more on its mind:

The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been written: -- I mean the law-copyists or scriveners.

The word "scrivener" comes ultimately from the Latin word for "scribe." I wonder if there are still any scriveners nowadays, in our postmodern times.

Last Line of Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener (1853)

Herman Melville
1819-1891
Wikipedia

Last line here:

Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!

Strange words from a strange man . . .

My own novella's resonant first line

Amazon

My own BBB (sometimes written bbb, which resembles 666) has some resonance in its first line:

The world sometimes just declines to cooperate with my good intentions.

When a story begins like this - think, for example, of the ambiguity in the word "declines" - you just know something terrible is going to happen . . .

Arthur Machen's opening line in The Hill of Dreams

Amazon

Carter Kaplan suggested checking out the resonant opening to Arthur Machen's The Hill of Dreams:

There was a glow in the sky as if great furnace doors were opened.

That resonates with me, partly because I connect it to Hell's gates opening in Paradise Lost 2.871 . . .

Moby Dick's resonant first and last lines

Moby Dick

Amazon

Everyone knows this novel's famous opening line:

Call me Ishmael.

And, of course, its equally famous closing line:

And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

Well, I am here to tell you that you are wrong. The true opening is as follows:

The pale Usher -- threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now. He was ever dusting his old lexicons and grammars, with a queer handkerchief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags of all the known nations of the world.

But even that is prefaced by these words of etymology supplied by . . . oh, you'll get it on your own:

Etymology.

(Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School.)

And the true closing words are these:

It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.

And that's the truth!