WRB—Sept. 11, 2024

“how briskly zeitgeists come and go”

Officially a Managing Editor is said to be born in the District of Columbia, but it was in New York that I was born; it was upon that dry but fertile country that I later superposed so many regions of the world. The official fiction has some merit: it proves that decisions of the mind and of the will do prevail over circumstance. The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree the WRB.

N.B.:

WRB Presents will return next Tuesday, September 17, with an evening featuring readings from Helen Chandler, K. T. Mills, Samuel Kimbriel, and Kayla Jean. The Managing Editors have graciously excerpted, as always, samples of their writing so you will know the quality of our guests. Being convinced of this, you will join us by signing up at the link below:

The next monthly D.C. Salon, on the topic “Can we choose our beliefs?”, will take place on September 28. If you would like to attend, please email Chris for the details.

Links:

• Two in The Paris Review:

  • An excerpt from a collection of lectures by Fredric Jameson (The Years of Theory: Lectures on Modern French Thought, edited by Carson Welch, October 8):

    I once interviewed an East German novelist who was quite interesting at the time, and we asked him the then-obvious question: “How much of an influence did Faulkner have on you?” As you know, after the war, all over the world, it is the example of Faulkner that sets everything going, from the Latin American boom to the newer Chinese novel. Faulkner is a seminal world influence at a certain moment. But what does that mean, “Faulkner’s influence”? So he said, “No, I never learned anything from Faulkner—except that you could write page after page of your novel in italics.”

    What does that mean? It means that to be influenced by somebody is not to write like him or her; rather, someone’s work suddenly opens up new possibilities that you never thought of before. It never occurred to you that you could put page on page in italics. Suddenly, you’re free. You’re opened up to something new, which may go in a completely different direction.

    [All I dream of is new possibilities. —Steve]

  • Ben Lerner interviews Rosmarie Waldrop:

    Lerner: Do you have a particular philosophy of translation?

    Waldrop: One thing I’ve found useful is a very practical method used by the critic Justin O’Brien. His approach was to at first just make a literal translation, and then put the original away and treat the translation like it’s your own poem. Then look at the original versus your translation and wrestle the translation back toward the original. I have followed that procedure myself.

    And Lawrence Venuti drew my attention to Schleiermacher, who said that translation ought to be foreignizing. But of course Schleiermacher said this with a political intent, because he felt the German language needed enrichment—that compared to French it was lumbering, so bringing in French vocabulary and structure would benefit it. That was the early nineteenth century, during a very nationalist moment in Germany. But I think this is a good thing to think about, because if a translation is not altogether smooth, it makes the reader read more slowly.

• In Works in Progress, Justin Germain on the effects of rediscovering ancient works:

  Imagine an alternate universe where all sources about America were written by Soviets at the height of the Cold War. The historians of the future might get a warped sense of reality. That’s exactly the case with ancient Sparta. Furthermore, because the Spartans’ treasure was their culture, not their art or buildings, there is very little archaeology can tell us about how the Spartans lived. Thucydides put this best when, at the outset of his History of the Peloponnesian War, he states that future historians will find it difficult to believe that Athens was seen as the underdog and Sparta the overwhelming favorite when they consider the great temples and agorae of Athens, in juxtaposition to the little developed infrastructure of Sparta. But not all infrastructure is physical or leaves material remains. The city of Sparta did not have a defensive wall in the classical age. Yet, according to Plutarch’s Sayings of the Spartans, the men were their wall. Therefore, in studying Sparta, we have only the written record to guide us.

  • Chris:

    When I open these texts I am seeking to understand what has been handed down to me and to grasp a little better what has been considered worthwhile about continually reading these very old books. What I hope to obtain by doing so is to be able to answer the questions I encounter in the present—the reason I hope for this is because many others have obtained the same. This is not the case when I wonder what it would be like to read the books Aristotle wrote, which we no longer have with us and which no one now living has read, and this for many centuries.

    [I want to gesture at Lascaux (Lot more about Lascaux in The Pound Era than I expected going in.) but I’m not sure exactly what I hope to explain by so doing. What the cave paintings have for us has nothing to do with tradition—at least, not when they were first discovered. —Steve]

[Behind the paywall: Steve’s mixed thoughts on Bruce Springsteen and clever idea for promoting historical knowledge, Byron, Mahler, Stevenson, English clothing, education, literary scenes, and more links, reviews, news items, and commentary carefully selected for you, just like on Saturdays. If you like what you see, why not sign up for a paid subscription? The WRB is for you, and your support helps keep us going.]