Origins of Wednesday xviii: Omnia mutantur, nihil interit

Not long ago, I defended
having weathered another
Summer without Proust, 
as escaping a kind of in-
tellectual nuisance, like
his great translator's
trench fever at the Wes-
tern Front, that threat-
ens never entirely to go
away. I recognize an os-
tentation in renouncing
a notable treasure, and,
yes, I agree with the but-
ler in Sturges' Sullivan's
Travels, that an affecta-
tion of impoverishment is
as low a gesture as a man
can make. But, as I men-
tioned at the time, I do
not welcome lightly the
irritations of a master-
piece.

Now I incline suddenly
to relent, as an even
better season for stor-
ies approaches on the
calendar; but now I do
so for a reason which
pretty well goes to the
heart of what I'm doing
here. I'm going to en-
gage M. Proust in some-
one else's restatement.

I've admitted doing this
a fair amount. To me, the
affecting element of a
great translation is its
generous sociabiity, its
fulfillment of an obliga-
tion our schools demanded
of us all, to give our
peers our best contribu-
tion to their understand-
ing. In any case, it is
idle to pretend we read
alone - except possibly
in the gulag of I0S 9.

This explains our weakness
for the experience of the
Classics, which are only
social discourses; and why
it is natural to approach
even Proust from the hands
of a prodigy in Ovid. When
commanded in his entrance
exam for Winchester in 1903, 
to render some lines of Ovid
into serviceable English, the
schoolboy C.K. Scott Moncrieff
proposed the following ~


               Omnia mutantur, nihil interit ..

               Everything is changed but nothing

               perishes. The spirit wanders, going

               hence, thither, coming thence, hith-

               er, and takes possession of any limbs

               it pleases. With equal ease it goes

               from beasts into human bodies and from 

               us into beasts, nor in any length of 

               time does it fail. And as wax is easily 

               moulded in new shapes, nor remains as 

               it had been before, nor keeps the same 

               form, but yet is itself the same; so do 

               I teach that the soul is ever the same, 

               but migrates into different shapes.

I don't distrust precocity on

this scale, intuition so ener-

getic, yet so calm in its respect

for a finished work's composure.
I don't distrust the image of an 
approachable other consciousness.

I don't distrust the gift for af-

fection in a discovery of its dis-

cipline. It refreshes everything.
Is this style, or is it taste?

I can regret an aristocracy all

I want, but it's hopeless to de-

nounce its virtues, rare as their

embodiment may be. Some examiner

at Winchester must have wept to

find his exercise in translation

translated as a manifesto on its

obligations and its promise. In
this prospectus taste is in good
hands. What wax is this, moulded 
to bring nuisance to our winter?

Jean Findlay

Chasing Lost Time

  The life of CK Scott Moncrieff

  Soldier, Spy and Translator

Chatto & Windus, 2014©

op. cit.

Walter Kaiser

A Hero of Translation

A review of Findlay

The New York Review

June 4, 2015©

Dancing home

The papers are full of an ex-
citement one can well imagine,
that Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn is
now playing on the screen. He
requires no introduction, but
if he did, I think it could 
be reduced to the sentence he
assigns to his heroine, mid-
way through the novel at page
137, after she had become at
ease with a partner with whom
she would meet for dancing on
Fridays, and movies another
night each week. Or here, at
least, is the overture his
readers hear, to the dimming
of the cineplex, for him - 


   She thought it was
   strange that the mere
   sensation of savouring
   the prospect of some-
   thing could make her
   think for a while that
   it must be the prospect
   of home.

In the previous thirty pages

he has allowed this improbable

equation to imply itself, per-

sistently, with the subtlest 

application, allowing his prose

the patient assurance of an al-

most perfect dancing partner.

In the pleasantly lengthening

shelf of his books which we all,

probably, share repeatedly with

friends, we find this faculty

unfolding constantly. Simply to

gather in straight lines of text 

the multifaceted nuances of a 

partnering's becoming home, is

a choreography rare enough to

see if cinema can pull it off.

Of course there is excitement.

Colm Tóibín

Brooklyn

  A Novel

Scribner, 2009©

Xavier Serrano

Joseph Biden and the end of choice

  One almost cannot bear to glance
  at the superficiality of remarks
  in print at the moment, on the
  causes and consequences of Joe
  Biden's non-candidacy for higher
  office. But at one point, these
  vacuous spins inevitably converge.
  Another Presidency of a Clinton 
  is all but forced, as the logical
  progeny of the end of choice. So
  much for the vitality of that i-
  deal.

  Are we then by waves, directed in
  republics.

Euripides
Bacchae
ibid.

Red horizon

   But why was Pentheus there?

   He went to mock the gods,
   and your rituals.

   But we - why were we there?

   You were out of your wits.
   The whole city was possessed
   by Bacchus.

Among the accomplishments of
the Classics, their proof of
our existence is almost too
multifarious to measure, from
the verifying strain endured
in their translation, to the
labor incurred in their eva-
sion. Certainly above all o-
thers, the play which stipu-
lates the price of our ignor-
ing is the Bacchae of Euripi-
des. The new translation men-
tioned the other day, is as
clear as one could want - in
that extraordinary imagery,
no one could ever want --
in bringing this luminous
creation home in gorgeous
bits and pieces. It is fair
to speak of the beauty of a
thing in terms of its price
tag. This one's lies along
the crest of the trapezius,
and defies all other price.


















Euripides
Bacchae
ca 405 BC
Robin Robertson
  translation
Daniel Mendelsohn
  preface
Ecco/Harper Collins, 2014©

Saturday commute cxiv: finders keepers

What we like about this game, and have every reason to believe, Hera-clitus figured out, is that the trouvaille doesn't solve a mystery; it opens one.

Arms and the man

  Kandinsky in Dessau
  between the wars, 
  Walter Gropius, ar-
  chitect.

  I've been neglect-
  ing my reading a-
  gain.

Plate smears

I was delighted to run into
a Mourvèdre from the Domaine
Tempier, last Sunday after-
noon outdoors, on what would
best have been a shaded park
bench, but happened to be a
typical iron perch at a side-
walk bistro, not far from my
local bookseller. The Robert-
son translation of The Bac-
chae had come in, but on im-
pulse I thought the day was
one for doing, more than say-
ing, so I paused to enjoy a
wine so identified with the
essence of Provence that my
objections to restaurants
might have been surmounted.

 To be fair, they were at least
 circumscribed, by the translu-
 cent warmth of the wine we 
 love so well for imparting 
 the gnarly, sunshocked vigor 
 of the vines it rides in on.
 Nothing is more plain than
 that this almost baked fruit
 of dark and thick-skinned ber-
 ries is evolved by rigid thin-
 ning of the clusters, to con-
 centrate such depth of earthy
 flavors and scorched herb ar-
 omatics, to saturate its am-
 ple tannins in one of the
 more opulent palates of   
 France. With the decanter
 resting in shade and one's
 chair exposed to the Autumn
 light, one tends not to speak
 as the palate's slaked by rus-
 tic veils, dissolving.




I would try this on the road, or at home, before submitting to the artifices that I endured, of commerce. From the title of this entry, it's already anticipated that the food one allowed to be prepared for the wine arrived with cliché at all four corners - the affected toppling disarray of elements, the witty cascade of mutually cancel-ing conceits - superfluous acids offered to correct extraneous lav-ishness - and of course, the telltale daubs and smears and rivulets of neo-aïoli unguents out of Ralph Steadman's latest poster. All of this, mind you, to update the flawlessly congealed pair of eggs. But the vines speak for themselves. If they can take exposure on the slopes of Bandol, they can weather the taunts of our professions.

Richard Olney
Lulu's Provençal Table
Alice Waters, foreword
Ten Speed Press, 1994©

Kermit Lynch
Adventures on the Wine Route
North Point Press, 1990©

Exchanging a word

I read in the morning
papers of a proposal
to update the text of
Shakespeare, and saw
the thought dismissed
as a waste of time.

What more horrid oth-
er loss can there be?

Who knew, convenience
would offer sanctuary
to simple immortality?

Yet we find this for-
tunate calculation at
work in the odd tree,
not clear-cut from the
mountaintop, and the
mute, unbothered, for
having nothing to say.

         Subtle Plato, patron saint of friendship,
         Scolded those nurslings of the myrtle-bed
         Whose tender souls, first seized by love's madness,

         Then stirred to rapturous frenzies, overnight
         Turn sour, their eyes narrowed with suspicions,
         Sleepless, feverishly refusing company.

         The soul, in constant motion because immortal,
         Again and again is "deeply moved" and flies
         To a new favourite, patrolling the upper air

         To settle briefly on this or that heart-
         Stopping beauty, or flutters vainly around
         The flame of its own image, light of its life.

         Better the friend to whom we're drawn by choice
         And not instinct or the glass threads of passion.
         Better the friend with whom we fall in step

         Behind our proper god, or sit beside
         At the riverbend, idly running a finger
         Along his forearm when the conversation turns

         To whether everything craves its opposite,
         As cold its warmth and bitter its honeydrop,
         Or whether like desires like - agreed? -

         Its object akin to the good, recognizing
         In another what is necessary for the self,
         As one may be a friend without knowing how

         To define friendship, which itself so often slips
         Through hands because ... but he's asleep
         On your shoulder by now and probably dreaming

         Of a face he'd glimpsed on the street yesterday,
         The stranger he has no idea will grow irreplaceable
         And with whom he hasn't yet exchanged a word.


























J.D. McClatchy
The Rest of the Way
  Poems
  Dedicated to 
    James Merrill
  An Essay on Friendship
    vi
Alfred A. Knopf, 1992©
op. cit.

Autumn prism

I agreed to join a friend
for lunch outside today, of
truite amandine and haricots
verts, and we settled on a
Loire Valley Pinot Noir in
lieu of the usual white sus-
pects, in view of the ample
use of butter in the sauté
of the fish. Our early sips
rebuked our expectations;
but as the butteriness and
the nuttiness built up, we
appreciated how the wine's
vitality in acidity, as we
could have expected from a
fine Riesling or Chablis,
was gainfully augmented by
the bonding tannins in the
Loire Valley flux, without
more butter of Chardonnay
evolved in oak. We linger-
ed in open shade, admiring
the softer sun of this won-
derful season, and I don't
think we will forget the
grace notes of persistent
earth in the gentle, warm,
allusive red.

    as the sun goes down over Ballyknick and Ballymacnab
    and a black-winged angel takes flight.


























Paul Muldoon
Moy Sand and Gravel
  Poems
  Homesickness
  [first verse, fragment]
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002©