A Momentary Taste of Being

from Rilke's Book of Hours   from "The Book of Pilgrimage" Rainer Maria Rilke tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy  Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you. Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you. And without feet I can make my way to you, without a mouth I can swear your name. Break off my arms, I'll take hold of you with my heart as a hand. Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat. And if you consume my brain with fire, I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood. II, 7 The mystical strain of this poetry follows the common ground of a mysticism.  There is a mysterious and serious violence that seems to follow "And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force."  This seems to be the strain we are entertaining here. The violence of this poem suggests the violence of the love that will transport the individual. This love is transformative--"stop ...

from Rilke's Book of Hours from "The Book of Pilgrimage" Rainer Maria Rilke Tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy So God, you are the one who comes after. It is sons who inherit, while fathers die. Sons stand and bloom. You are the heir. II, 9 I don't even know where to start with this.  The logic is so alien and yet so right that reading this opens many doors.  In what way, precisely is God the heir?  What is it that he inherits?  How is it that He comes after.  And yet-- "I am the alpha and omega,  the beginning and the end, the first and the last."  So not only is He father, but He is also the last, the one to whom all things must come. As I said, there is a logic here that makes the poem like a little puzzle box, fascinating, mysterious, and worth the time to think about carefully.

Part of a poem that really struck me: from Rilke's Book of Hours from "The Book of Pilgrimage" Rainer Maria Rilke Tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy . . .  This is what the things can teach us: to fall patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly. II, 16

from Rilke's Book of Hours from "The Book of a Monastic Life" Rainer Maria Rilke Tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy I come from the soaring in which I lost myself. I wa song, and the refrain which is God is still roaring in my ears. Now I am still and plain: no more words. To the others I was like a wind: I made them shake. I'd gone very far, as far as the angels, and high, where light things into nothing. But deep in the darkness is God. I, 50 Whether it is Rilke himself, or Rilke through translators, he exactly captures some sense of what St. John of the Cross describes in the via negativa .  In the darkness, one finds God.  It is only by not seeking and not possessing that we find and we have.  It makes no sense.  Unless you've been there.

The unfortunate closing of Borders across the country has led to momentary benefit for me in straightened  circumstances.  Wandering in, I came across a book of poetry I didn't even know I wanted at a much reduced price.  The example will clearly indicate why this was a good thing. from Rilke's Book of Hours   from "The Book of a Monastic Life" Rainer Maria Rilke tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy   Because someone once dared to want you, I know that we, too, may want you. When gold is in the mountain and we've ravaged the depths until we've given up digging, it will be brought forth into day by the river that mines the silences of stone. Even when we don't desire it, God is ripening. I.16 Gorgeous in its expression of the mystical desire for God and in the subtle understanding of God's preparation of the individual for same.

Pervigilium Veneris in a translation by Thomas Parnell Excerpt: She paints the purple Year with vary'd show, Tips the green gem, and makes the Blossom glow. She makes the turgid Buds receive the Breeze, Expand to Leaves, and shade the naked Trees.

Genre: Literary Fiction/Translation 2011 Having much enjoyed t he previous effort by Lianke that I read, I was looking forward to this book.  To put your minds immediately at ease, I was not disappointed.  Indeed, if anything, this was an even better novel. Dream of Ding Village tells the story of Ding village and three generations of the Ding family.  The father of the narrator is a schemer who is always looking for an angle to make money.  He starts his career as a "blood-head" making a fortune purchasing and selling the blood of the townspeople.  Naturally, he fails to practice even the most rudimentary hygienic and safety precautions and in due time the every family in the town has at least one family member who has succumbed to or presently has HIV/AIDS.  This not being enough for Ding Hui, he spends the rest of the book involved in various schemes. Grandpa is deeply shamed by Ding Hui's conduct and begs him to make restitution to the town....

Producers of one of the single most tone-deaf translations of the Bible in recent years, the USCCB makes yet other unneccessary changes.

Exploring Happiness by Sissela Bok If there is a place where I am most often deficient in my reading of works in translation, it certainly must be works in translation.  This one sounds like a wonderful intellectual feast.  I hope I can find it in the local library soon. (Although, it is possible this is not a translation--still, the point holds.)

"Social Experiment" The challenge of the untranslatable word

The Last Ringbearer Yisroel Markov And a link to the entry on which one may find the downloadable file. And in an odd case of synchronicity--Brandywine Books discovered this as well.

Feiyu and Oe among those on the Man Booker Asian Prize List.

HMH Books in Translation Giveaway

Books notable for their fine translations- -it doesn't say anything about the quality of the book itself, but the list may provide some very interesting reading for those looking for work originally published in languages other than English.

Nominations for best works in translation

"Autumn" considered

Homeric translations online Richmond Lattimore interlineal translation Richmond Lattimore was THE definitive translation before the most recent by Robert Fagles, and probably the one many of us received our introduction to Homer through.  Seeing it played out against the Greek text (even though I read only a little Greek) is indeed lovely.

Of Falling Birds and Poetry

A nice analysis of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt offerings in translation And the HMH Lit in translation blog

Martial's Latin with multiple English renditions.