Languor Management

The hybridity of historical images and narration

Reza Baraheni on three very different Persian writers that challenge our perception of Iran as an "Islamic monolith":

The Russian literary theorist Michael Bakhtin once said that all great narratives had come into existence on the borders of two neighbouring countries. In fact, for him it was "dialogical imagination," the fruit of many years or even centuries of cultural, social and linguistic barter across the borders of identities that moulded the form and content of both historical and literary narrative. The writer of such a narrative was branded by the burning rod of hybridity -- a kind of psychological, social or historical schizophrenia -- and a vision that required more than one pair of eyes, surveying the universe in a multilayered mirror designed for simultaneous reflections of both identity and difference.

The three books chosen for reflection on Iran here were born, each in its own way, under the sign of hybridity, and as such reflect not one, but numerous aspects of the reality and mentality, not only of their own times, but also of the past and future of many others who came after them. The three are: The Histories of Herodotus, The Thousand and One Nights, as narrated to the woman-killer Shahriyar by Scheherazade, and The Blind Owl , by Sadegh Hedayat. They were written in different historical periods, but new associations link them together within the semantic context of our contemporary world.

The greatest promotion of Russian literature since Omar Sharif cantered across the steppe in a fur hat as Doctor Zhivago

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volohonsky, the mega-star translators of this summer's Oprah's Book Club pick Anna Karenina, talk to Newsday's Alex Abramovich about writers and literary translation.

In Russia, literary translation is viewed as an art unto itself. In English-speaking countries, it tends to be seen as a specialized, second-order occupation -- as a result, good translations into English can be hard to come by and tough for even the best translators to sell. But Pevear and Volokhonsky put more care into their translations than many authors put into their own work.

Questions about authenticity, about history, about revolt, about gender

A bit afield, but this is just plain weird:

At the 1925 premiere of Sergei Eisenstein's silent film "Battleship Potemkin," the angular shots of brutish Cossacks and screaming crowds unfolded to strains of Ludwig Van Beethoven and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. This summer, though, British pop duo the Pet Shop Boys will perform a new interpretation of the revolutionary classic.

Then again, it worked for Ab Fab.

He dislikes totalitarianism as a theory

According to Robert Service, Richard Overy's The Dictators, an attempt to compare politics, life, and culture under Hitler and Stalin, is a book that "needed to be written."

The regimes led by Hitler and Stalin are the benchmark for dictatorship in the 20th century. Terror and legal nihilism prevailed in both countries. Civil associations outside the regular control of the party-state were suppressed or traumatised into compliance. The economy, society and culture were penetrated by central political authority. An official ideology was imposed. Cultic reverence was demanded for the supreme leader, führer or vozhd, who sent commands down through a smoothly functioning hierarchy. A whole new form of modernity seemed to have been invented. As the cold war intensified after the second world war, the theory underwent elaboration as writers contrasted the German and Soviet historical experience with the practices and values of liberal democracy. The Third Reich and the prewar USSR were said to constitute a composite model of rulership: totalitarianism.

Taking the 'Sunny' out of Sunny California

I often kill an hour or two of my lazy days at Stir Crazy, an agreeable cafe in West Hollywood that sort of reminds me of Williamsburg, and that's what I did yesterday afternoon. I didn't go there to write or really to read, I was bored and antsy. I thought a walk would have helped but I had just toured all through Little Odessa, marveling at the sorts of things people bring to pawn shops — jewelry (of course), guitars and amplifiers, crystal decanters, sheet music, telephones, fur coats, &c. — but it hadn't. There's just nothing cheery about a row of pawnshops across the street from a bail bondsman's office.

Because the waitress is especially nice to me, I like to go there and simply flip through magazines and people watch. I'd tried to read or write there in the past but in the end I have to admit that I get bored or distracted and instead watch all the other customers typing away at their Macs or chatting about who'd they'd cast in the film should it be "picked up."

On this occassion, at least six people were busy on their screenplays, some sort of casting meeting was going on in the corner booth, and two pretty, sun-kissed girls, their bikini tops visible beneath their shirts, were reading lines from a script to each other in a darker corner. I was reading the Crate & Barrel Summer Sale catalog. I had given myself an imaginary budget of $5,000 to outfit the new apartment I would be moving into next month in New York, the terms being that I had to spend it all and I could only use items available through the catalog.

I noticed that some new artist had hung paintings, mostly of a skinny, naked girl with spikey blonde hair and large doe eyes, on the walls of the coffee shop. They were classic cafe-art fare: bright, flat, lifeless portraits with no sense of perspective or proportion. But a number of the regulars seemed to like them, even going so far as to point out some of their virtues, which I just didn't see myself. At one point, the door opened and in walked a thin, young, blonde, spikey-haired girl with doe eyes dressed in paint spattered denim short-shorts and a tank top. One gentleman was stunned and blurted out "It's you!"

"Excuse me?" she responded in a little girl's voice.

"You're the girl in the paintings! You're even better looking in person."

"Thanks! I painted them myself. They're for sale, just so you know."

"They're great, but I don't think I can afford them so I'll just come here and look at them," he replied. And no, he didn't look like he could afford to spend $400 on a painting, let alone a poor representation of the art, but yes, he did look like the sort of fellow who would come to a coffee shop everyday to stare at self-portraits of a young, naked woman.

She went to the counter and asked the waitress, "Have any sold yet?"

"No, but a lot of people like them!"

"I think they're fantastic," another man, a middle-aged would-be screen writer I'd seen there frequently chimed in. "I especially like this one here...," he motioned the young artist over to a large portrait of herself stepping shyly out of a bath tub with water running down her small breasts and stomach.

"Thanks! It's me! I like to paint myself in everyday situations. It's for sale if you want to buy it."

"Maybe later," he said and she looked like she actually believed him. Then, placing his hand on her shoulder, he walked her down to another painting, this one of the nude artist staring into the eyes of another naked young woman, a brunette, both with sparkles spirling out of their eyes. "Is she you're...uh...girlfriend?" And I swear he was becoming visibly aroused.

"Oh! No!" she blushed, "That's my best friend. She's really beautiful. Do you think you might want to buy that one?"

"I think you're both very beautiful. Did she pose for you like that or did you have to imagine what she would look like?" He looked like he could easily imagine what everyone in the coffee house would look like naked.

"She posed for me. She's the best model! I paint her a lot" the artist beamed though not without noticing the man's hand lingering on her shoulder, adding "I promised her I'd give her half of what I got from the portraits that she's in. It's not easy to let someone paint you naked. It makes you vulnerable," she looked down shyly and then suddenly looked at him and said, "I could give you a break on this one if you really like it. How about $350?"

And just as I thought he was going to undo his pants and start masturbating right then and there, a new gent arrived on the scene carrying a box of toys. Without saying a word. He put the box down next to the artist and the art connoisseur and pulled out a miniature SUV and remote-control unit. Placing the toy on the floor, he immediately caused it to drive in between and around them, reversing itself and making tight turns, even flipping over and righting itself.

"At Radio Shack these go for $60 to $80, but today we're offering them for just $25," he said to the room. "They're not stolen and I'm a legitimate wholesale distributer."

Our art expert was spellbound and apparently satisfied with the agent's credentials. "Cool! Twenty-five dollars?" he asked, reaching for his wallet. The young artist appeared annoyed and took the opportunity to order an iced tea as the two gentlemen completed the transaction.

Somebody hide the garden claw

Speaking of translation problems, the Russians are coming to blows over at Philip Larkin's garden.

I have mercilessly subjected Larkin's Cut Grass to a RussDil nonsense check by translating it word-by-word, so far in my mind, into Russian. It turned out fine, of course, except for one and a half expressions. "White lilac," along with white acacia, is such a devalued sentimental cliché in Russian it should be avoided. "Chestnut flowers" are more tolerable but not first-rate either. Remind me not so much of April in Paris as of Soviet Ukrainian radio with its Kiev Waltz.  Finally, I haven't found a refined Russian alias for wild carrot, which is Queen Anne's lace. At best, it's just belogolovka, the white head.

Exchanges with Nordic countries seem natural

According to Zachariah Wells in maisonneuve, Canada is suffering from a lack of poetry translated from foreign tongues into English.

As renowned poet and translator A. F. Moritz put it to me, “If you don’t bring over the most central speech of a people, its poetry, you’ve denied its essential humanness access to the pith of the culture into which you are supposedly welcoming it. You’ve denied the most important contribution it can make to the basic ethos of its new home and the native place of its future children. And you’ve blocked the greatest contribution it can make to the ongoing health and intelligence and development of Canada and of English and French.” Moritz notes that “this nation is a-crawl with literarily talented and ambitious people who have native access to literally hundreds of languages.” Why, then, is this bonanza of talent not translating into more activity?

[Via Language Hat]

Summer Reading in Moscow

Apparently, the Russians are only reading newspapers and Philip Roth this summer. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, I've just picked up Iain Banks's The Wasp Factory, which is making it difficult for me to relax.

Vampires must receive licenses to suck human blood;

With the publication of a new edition of Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch in the run up to a film based on the fantasy writers novel, the Russian book market is starting to catch up with the West.

Still, even though Lukyanenko helped write the film's script, only one-third of the novel made its way to the screen. Lost in the bargain was much of the insight into the world of its heroes -- a place where nothing is what it seems, where Others crawl through Moscow's streets, where Darkness and Light wage an eternal, hopeless war, and where vampires, witches and werewolves are as often to be met with as accountants and cashiers. The film keeps little of this background material, throwing its viewers headlong into its crepuscular world. At the end of the day, this is probably a good thing; elaborate explanations can seem artificial on-screen.

from Under Suspicion

...there they go, writing poems. Configurations of letters plugged in
to the unstoppable machines of interference. They write
as if they actually expected something from life
and it gave them nothing. And it really is unbearable
when God is thick-tongued, slouch-backed, and spends all his time
in cemeteries playing a plywood guitar.
They gossip about this too
with electronic voices
— about nature,
which entwines nests and branches with its cobwebs.
Sometimes in this clay-like birdsong
one can guess "believe the revisions", something about women,
who unravel as slippery loops of thread to the depths of sunset.
"But what exactly are you doing?"
Yes, ask me, but ask intelligibly,
ask me so that I may grasp the gist of things
Be articulate, do not avoid the sense of responsibility
Take two steps back, do not hurry
And if there is a stone nearby
stand on it, raise your arm as befits someone
whom you can't lead by the nose,
and then extend it, open-palmed,
asking — "what exactly are you doing?"
I? what am I doing?
I am taking a swallow of pale cold beer,
I slowly wipe my lips, bite off a herring's head,
light up a cigarette and shield my eyes
not because it is excessively bright out today
or, say, just in case,
but because a north May wind is blowing,
carrying dust, bits of garbage, insomnia, frailty,
exquisitely equal to the frailty of the heart.

— Arkadii Dragomoshchenko (translated by Genya Turovsky)

Read "Possible Indications" (also translated by Genya at Balaklava)