Mostly Music

2005-10-12T21:47:00.000-07:00

foto antigona, Ruth e eu. S? testando o Picasa

2004-05-13T08:51:00.000-07:00

I learned this week that my contract with TCNJ will not be renewed...so the jig is up here as of June 30. I am looking into alternative employment possibilities.....

2004-05-06T12:55:00.000-07:00

Williamsburg again...

On Saturday i will go play a solo recital of music for unaccompanied flute (my first ever!)
which will include the world premier of four bagatelles for flute by Sergio Roberto de Oliveira.

2004-02-26T10:15:00.000-08:00

Disappeared

Missing and believed abducted by aliens from Venus: Laura Ronai. Last sighting: Sept. 23, this blog. Those who may have information on her whereabouts, please contact this bloggeur......

2004-02-26T09:40:00.000-08:00

More Ronai in print

The March issue of the ATA Chronicle will have the article "Sleeping Beauty" by Paulo Ronai (from "Babel", in my translation).

2004-02-26T09:38:00.000-08:00

Sergio in the US

Sergio Roberto de Oliveira has been visiting with me since Feb. 15, with two lectures here at The College of New Jersey, and one at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Today he is being interviewed on the radio in Delaware.

2004-02-26T09:35:00.000-08:00

The old template was dead, and Laura has not been posting...
but you should have a nice welcome instead of that black space....

2004-01-15T15:10:00.000-08:00

Interviews!!!

Today brought an envelope with four issues of 21st Century Music, which is catching up with its backlog. That means that
there are four interviews which have been waiting quite some time to appear.

Nov. 2002, Interview with Robert Maggio, pp. 1-5.
Dec. 2002 Interview with Mark Hagerty, pp. 1-3.
Dec. 2003 Interviews with Caio Senna and Antonio Guerreiro, pp. 1-8

2004-01-15T09:33:00.000-08:00

2003-12-15T05:43:00.000-08:00

Williamsburg with Jen

Harpsichordist Jen Bowen and I drove down to Williamsburg, Virginia on Saturday, where we played a concert at Bruton Parish Church. The weather was wonderful (very clear and sunny, which means cold in the winter time here) for our drive, so we made it there in about 5 1/2 hours. Jen rested and I saw a few bits of Wmsburg that I hadn't seen before (a used book shop, where I bought recent fiction in Spanish) and what seems to be THE happening coffee shop (my fancy latte was a little TOO sweet). We had a capacity crowd for the concert - the main floor and all three balconies were full. We played three Telemann suites for obligato harpsichord and flute, and Jen played the Bach Partita no. 2 in C minor. Only disappointment: nobody we knew who could tell us how it went....
Afterwards we had barbecue at a local restaurant (we were the last customers to leave, at
11:15 on a Saturday night!!!!!)

2003-12-15T05:21:00.000-08:00

Volto

Volto amanha.......

2003-12-08T09:19:00.000-08:00

Mujeres

Las mujeres son putas asesinas, Max, son monos ateridos de frío que contemplan el horizonte desde un árbol enfermo, son princesas que te buscan en la oscuridad, llorando, indagando las palabras que nunca podrán decir.
-Roberto Bolano

2003-12-03T12:38:00.000-08:00

2003-12-03T12:36:00.000-08:00

Concert Review

Anita Donovan in the Times of Trenton....

"An enthusiastic audience of young and old at the Unitarian Church of Princeton enjoyed a concert by Le Triomphe de L'Amour last week featuring 17th-century chamber music played on period instruments. Dubbed ``Mostly Telemann,'' the program included two of Georg Philip's Paris Quartets, a duet for flute and viola da gamba, and a sonata for solo viola da gamba. For a little touch of the South, works of Arcangelo Corelli and Dario Castello were interspersed."

2003-11-26T08:27:00.000-08:00

Bienal

My article on the Bienal has just been posted at Brazilmax here.

2003-11-24T12:52:00.000-08:00

Acaso el problema de la irreversibilidad del tiempo sea el mayor impedimento humano.
Perhaps the problem of the irreversibility of time is the greatest human impediment.
- Marcelo Birmajer.

read the rest of the interview with this Jewish writer from Argentina here.

2003-11-18T11:35:00.000-08:00

More Ronai in print

Just learned that the January ATA Chronicle will have my translation of
Paulo Ronai's Ribeiro Couto, His Own Translator.

2003-11-02T07:22:00.000-08:00

Visiting

I am in new england visiting, staying with my parents. Yesterday i had a nice visit with my friend Jeanne Wells (whom i have known since elementary school days) and her husband David Hobbie. They live in Arlington Heights. Arlington is a town where the greatest amenity once was the pizza parlor. Now there are coffee shops, yoga establishments, and I even noted an Argentinean restaurant (named Tango). Then i went on to Harvard Square, where i did some early Christmas shopping (books), photocopied some public domain flute music (from 1845) and then lunched with my daughter Emma at a "middle eastern" restaurant. The quibe was a flat slice of something cooked in a pan...never saw anything like that before....Emma gave her kebab high marks. Then we climbed the Bunker Hill monument (296 steps) and drove around the Boston waterfront.
In the evening my parents and I went to hear Lisa Brooke's concert in Salem. It was fabulous, with a very good mezzo soprano, Deborah Renz-Moore. My fave: the Monteclair
"Mort de Didon". Wow! A very good time was had by all.

2003-10-31T09:37:00.000-08:00

Happiness

Both men and women are happier if they are married, a study suggests.
read about it here

2003-10-10T06:10:00.000-07:00

Milestone

After my working day I went to give blood at the Medical Center in Princeton, something I used to do more often when I could zip over there on my lunch break, donate, and be back at work for the afternoon (when I was working at Princeton). Yesterday I completed my eleventh gallon of donated blood.

Then I rewarded myself by picking up a copy of the most recent romantic comedy by Elizabeth Young at Barnes and Noble, "A Girl's Best Friend". I had read her first two novels and enjoyed them as well.

2003-10-09T11:46:00.000-07:00

Meu Brasil Brasileiro

Today I gave a lecture here at the College of New Jersey, as the first in a series at the Faculty Lunch Form. It was a brief intro to Brazilian popular music. In the audience I had a few professors, a Dean, and many students from the Music Dept., so many that a dozen had to sit on the floor. My playlist: Ultimo Desesjo (Noel Rosa, sung by Olivia Byington); Aquarela do Brasil (Barroso, sung by Gal Costa); Chega de Saudade (Jobim/Moraes, sung by Joao Gilberto - who else?); Desde que o Samba eh Samba (Caetano, sung by Caetano); video of Meditacao (Jobim/Mendonca, sung by Caetano); Carioca (Chico Buarque, sung by Chico). It was VERY well received. Nice questions from the students about the influence of jazz (or lack of it) in Brazilian music.

2003-09-23T20:31:00.000-07:00

HELLO AGAIN
This post is for my Manoela, who complained about my disappearance...
She is right, I have been absent from Mostly Music, as well as from my friend´s mailboxes. I am trying to write as much as I can - but only chapters for my doctoral dissertation. By the time the day ends, I am so sick of sitting in front of my computer that all I want is to watch some silly TV show.
But since my sweetie Ma is visiting the blog, she deserves a special kiss. Here, Ma, this is for you: KISS!

2003-09-22T09:15:00.000-07:00

Heavy weather

Hurricane Isabel arrived last week with lots of wind and rain, though not for my part of the US. Alexandria, where my cousin Rob Veeder and his lovely spouse, Leslie, live, was flooded by the Potomac River - I haven't heard yet from them how they were affected. I was scheduled to play a concert at Colonial Williamsburg (Virginia) on Saturday, and while it might have been possible to drive there by Friday, there was no electricity, due to the thousands of trees that were blown over. So we will reschedule.

On Sunday I visited with my friends Jen and Robert Bowen (Robert wrote a duo for Laura and me to play a few years ago; Jen (harpsichord) and I play together). They have a five-week old boy, Wesley, who looks healthy and happy, and slept for most of the time I was there. I brought them Wesley's first book, a copy of the classic Goodnight Moon, and will soon bring them some volumes from Merlin's library, as soon as Sarah retrieves them from storage in the eves.

High water in Alexandria

2003-09-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

New book

Sarah Milburn, to whom I was married for 20 years,
was working, with two fellow political scientists, on a study of how to project political power using military force (sponsored by the Navy).
The work was done in 1998. Now it is being published by Lexington Books. You can read about it
here.

2003-09-12T07:58:00.000-07:00

The Sonnet of Arvers

By Paulo Rónai
Translated by Tom Moore

At first I thought the idea of devoting an entire book to a single poem was odd. Even if it were a poem which was tumultuous, full of mysteries, like Rimbaud’s Le bateau ivre, for which Augusto Meyers promises an exegesis in the near future, or a disturbing little poem, all made of implications, such as the “Prêto no Branco” which Lêdo Ivo used recently as the pretext for a spirited analysis of the art of Manuel Bandeira! But the “Sonnet of Arvers”, a little work that everyone knows by heart, and never posed any enigmas to the imagination! and which, moreover, can already be summed up by its first quatrain:

Mon âme a son secret, ma vie a son mystère:
Un amour eternal en un moment conçu;
Le mal est sans espoir, aussi j’ai dû le taire,
Et celle qui l’a fait n’en a jamais rien su.

Tant de bruit pour un sonnet! As I did not know the author, I had formed an erroneous idea of the book. And so I let it sit in the bookshelf for a long time without opening it, pointlessly delaying the pleasure which reading it would give me.
Mr. Melo Nóbrega, whose bibliography is not notable for its quantity, already dedicated a volume to the history of the river Tietê. His present objective, though it may seem insignificant in comparison with the previous one, encloses an unforeseen wealth of confluences and ramifications, which only a sagacious and cultivated spirit would be able to discover.
Above all else, his sense of measure is praiseworthy, a quality rare in authors of monographs, who are often inclined to overvalue the topic which has monopolized their attention for such a long time. Recognizing the mediocrity of the “king of sonnets”, he treats him rather as a phenomenon of literary life, and not as a pure esthetic product, and is principally interested in the problem of the survival of these fourteen isolated lines, unsupported by any other work by Arvers, a minor Romantic poet. He shows how, within them, a commonplace of poetry of every age, but especially of Romantic poetry, came to be expressed in a balanced form, directly and simply, free from Romantic exaggerations. With its genesis and literary fate explained, not only does the sonnet gain a panoramic perspective, but other perspectives open on the relation of the work of art to the life of the author, with critical reception, with the public, with posterity.
Drawing on vast erudition, but which never become heavy, being subordinated to the control of good taste, the chapters of this delicious study unfold, together offering a model of literary monography. We are first introduced to the environment in which the sonnet unfolded, the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal in the time of Chares Nodier, and we see the modest figure of Félix Arvers pass through, amidst contemporaries of the first rank, and sigh platonically for the muse of the salon, Nodier’s daughter. The sonnet appears, of limited originality, in the weave of which we see echoes and perhaps unconscious reminiscences of lines from earlier poets; its vicissitudes, the periodic neglect which envelops it, its successive rediscoveries are related with the finesse of one who always knows how to bring out the revealing or picturesque detail. The same selective spirit puts in order the allusions, replies, imitations and pastiches which the sonnet gave rise to, until in the final chapter Melo Nóbrega lingers over a critical examination of the most well-known of its innumerable Brazilian translations.
As the principal value of the study lies precisely in its bringing together small but meaningful details, it is impossible to summarize it. Particularly instructive are the data concerning the great number of misunderstandings which contributed toward the crystallization of its fragile but enduring glory. The love which inspired the sonnet was not one of those great romantic passions; the situation it describes (sentiment unknown to the woman who provoked it) did not correspond to reality; the reply circulated as being from the pitiless muse was nothing more than a pastiche; the artistic perfection of the verses is a myth, which vanishes upon deeper study. To sum up, everything about the sonnet is mediocre: the protagonists, the sentimento, the events – but, through a miracle unique in his otherwise insignificant work, Arvers brought together these elements in their culminating moment, this unique instant of poetry latent in the life of every person.
The extraordinary success of the sonnet in Brazil, where its translation became so to speak an obligatory test for poets, and the name of the poet a conventional rhyme for mulher (woman), suggests to the commentator some acute observations on the possibility of translating poetry in general, as well as the degree of approximation achieved by the various translators. It is interesting to note that this poem, so often translated into Portuguese, would seem rather to discourage this, since none of the rhymes, once translated, continues to rhyme. Those translators who hang on to any of them fail in their attempt: thus, for example, one who retains mistério at the end of the first line, through fidelity to mystère in the French, is then forced to rhyme it with cemitério, refrigério, etéreo, funéreo, sério, etc., words that involve a distortion of the meaning and compromise the discretion and moderation that are the chief values of the original.
Among the versions considered in the volume, that of D. Pedro II deserves special attention (happy age in which monarchs translated sonnets!), less for its esthetic value (“The translation by our benevolent Emperor does not add to his literary merit”), than for the fact that in the imperial translation none of the six verbs of the first strophe of the original are carried over:

Segrêdo d’alma, da existência arcano,
Eterno amor um instante concebido,
Mal sem esperança, oculto a ente humano,
E nunca de quem fe-lo, conhecido.

If this metamorphosis of six orations into a single exclamation is quite curious, there are other translations which are no less picturesque and unexpected. A cotejo of the best of them – of which Prof. Júlio Nogueira spiritedly tried to create a fusion – leads us to suppose that, at least in theory, there should be only one perfect translation into Portuguese which is possible, which remains to be achieved. There is, then no reason for translators to give up hope: the “Sonnet” of Arvers, with which we are already so saturated, is still waiting, in spite of the hundreds of attempts which have already been made, for its definitive incorporation into the lyric poetry of the Portuguese language.
To my mind, from this point on, its greatest merit, more than transmuting a sentimental truism into poetry, consists in having stimulated the appearance of this handsome essay, a true model for scholars who have decided to focus on isolated works of literature, especially for the future authors of doctoral dissertations. Melo Nóbrega has offered us the work of a true humanist.

2003-09-10T07:12:00.000-07:00

Translating the title

By Paulo Rónai
Translated by Tom Moore

Respect for the work being translated ought obviously to begin with the title. But this is precisely where we most frequently find changes. This is because, in this case, is not able to compensate later (as he so frequently must) for the insufficiency of the solution which has been chosen.The title is a unit which is complete in itself, and has to convey a message and make an impact in just a few words.
It can happen, however, that the exact translation of the title lacks euphony, is ambiguous or inexpressive, or doesn?t even make sense. In these cases, often at the publisher?s insistence, the translator partially or completely alters the title of the book.
It is obvious that one should retain the title of a classic work in its periodic retranslations. It is understandable: a label consecrated over dozens, hundreds, sometimes even thousands of years, such as the Odyssey, the Aeneid, the Decameron, David Copperfield, Anna Karenina, Ulysses, is an element both identificador and qualificador at the same time, which one should not give up on. But not all titles are this simple. In the case of those which lend themselves to various interpretations, generally the first or one of the first translations tends to stick to the work inseparably: e.g. A Megera Domada and Sonho de uma Noite de Verão (Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer-Night?s Dream), O Médico à Força and As Sabichonas (Le Médecin malgré lui and Les Femmes Savantes, by Moliere).
Much more frequent are title changes for modern works. Often books which became best-sellers in their countries of origin, especially in the U.S.A, thanks to violent publicity, retain their titles, especially when popularized through the cinema. But these are not always as expressive as The Exorcist, to give an example: sometimes their literal translation would be weak. I thought this was the reason for the retention, on the title page of the Portuguese edition of Love Story, of the English title; but later I learned, from an interview with the publisher, that this had been demanded by the author. When this is not the case, as with ?O Chefão?(The Big Boss), the advertising insists on identifying the translation with the original The Godfather (which was more literally translated as O Padrinho in Portugal).
There is a class of titles, which, even if faithfully translated, fatally lose their connotations in their passage into another language. These are those, generally directed to an intellectual readership, which include literary allusions or quotations. This is a phenomenon which occurs frequently in the Anglo-Saxon world. Steinbeck found the title In Dubious Battle in Milton, Burning Bright in Blake, Of Mice and Men in Burns, Grapes of Wrath in the Battle Hymn of the Republic, The Winter of Our Discontent in Shakespeare. Huxley found Eyeless in Gaza in Milton, Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls in John Donne. One who memorized passages from Macbeth in adolescence will find greater intensity in the words The Sound and the Fury (Faulkner) than the Portuguese reader will in the O Som e a Furia.
Sometimes ignorance of the source of the citation can make the title incomprehensible. Thus one needs to remember the Mallarmé sonnet ?Le Tombeau d?Edgar Poe? to understand what Duhamel wanted to express in the title of his novel Tel qu?en lui-même; and to recall ?Mon rêve familier?, by Verlaine, to understand the title chosen by Flora Groult for her novel Ni tout à fait la meme, ni tout à fait une autre.
In spite of being translated literally into Italian ? Le Parole per Dirlo ? the title of the novel by Marie Cardinal, Les Mots pour le Dire cannot suggest to Italian readers what it does to the French, that is, these two verses of Boileau in L?Art Poétique:
?Ce que l?on conçoit bien s?énonce clairement
Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément.?

(Foreign translators would find themselves in similar straits in attempting to translate certain of our books whose authors sought their titles in poems by Drummond: Os Inocentes do Leblon, Os Mortos de Sobrecasaca, O Anjo Torto, E agora, José?, etc.).
And so translators, more than once, have chosen to disrespect the original title of important works: Limbo, Antic Hay, and Mortal Coils, this last taken from Hamlet (all by Huxley) became respectively Felizmente para Sempre (Happily For Ever), Ronda Grotesca () and Vingança Pérfida (Perfidious Vengeance); To Have and Have Not, by Hemingway, became Uma Aventura na Jamaica (An Adventure in Jamaica).
It should not be assumed these modifications are a Brazilian specialty: Eyeless in Gaza (still recognizable in Brazil as Sem Olhos em Gaza) was rechristened La Paix des Profondeurs in French, and Mortal Coils renamed Cercle Vicieux. Many readers, even the non-French, who know the novel Darkness at Noon, by Koestler, under the title by which it became celebrated in the French translation, Le Zéro et L?Infini, must think that these are different works. One could find many more examples.
Another handicap are the titles which represent idiomatic expressions or turns of phrase in the original language, as for example Le Chemin des Ecoliers, by Marcel Aymé, or The Heart of the Matter, by Graham Greene. (Here the Brazilian translator fell into the trap by translating the title literally, rather than using the idiomatic ?O xis do problema? .
Not infrequently these changes are made without the knowledge or approval of the authors. The authors, who in general do not know the language into which their work is translated, rarely complain. But on occasion there are protests: Joseph Kessel disapproved, with good reason, of the metamorphosis of Belle de Jour into Luxúria (Lust) by the Brazilian translator. And Theodore Dreiser, had he been alive, would have to have protested against the transformation of Sister Carrie into Sou o Pecado (I am Sin).
Carlos Lacerda relates an interesting observation made by Léopold Sédar Senghor, the poet-stateman of Senegal, on the translation which was given to the title of Casa Grande & Senzala in the French edition: Maîtres et Esclaves, which, in his opinion, gives a false idea not only of the content of the book but of the social and inter-racial relations in colonial Brazil .
Of course there are also felicitous changes, producing expressions which seem spontaneous, with no whiff of transplantation: Anos de Ternura (The Green Years, by Cronin), O Menino do Dedo Verde (Tistou les Pouces Verts, by Maurice Druon), O Morro dos Ventos Uivantes (Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë), this last a formula that the Brazilian translator found in the ?Balada de Emily Brontë?, by Tasso da Silveira (but in Portugal the book was titled O Monte dos Vendavais). We will add Foguinho , a true inspiration on the part of Athos Damasceno Ferreira for Poil de Carotte, by Jules Renard, and Os Frutos da Terra, the happy rendition by Sérgio Millet of Gide?s Les Nourritures Terrestres.
Carlos Drummond de Andrade, translator of Thérèse Desqueyroux, by Mauriac, agreed, at the request of the publisher, to the title Uma Gota de Veneno (A Drop of Poison); in this case, one could argue the difficulty of reading and pronouncing the title of the original. Rachel Queiroz rendered Galsworthy?s Forsyte Saga, some time ago, as A Crônica dos Forsyte, because the word ?saga? was practically unknown in Brazil then.
I recall some problems that I had to face when I organized the Brazilian edition of the Comédie Humaine, by Balzac. How to translate Les Chouans, a local term that designated the rebellious peasants of Brittany, and recalled the call of the owl, which they used to communicate with each other? Happily, according to the practice of the historical novels of the day, there was a subtitle: ou la Bretagne em 1799, which became the principal and sole title: Bretanha em 1799 (Brittany in 1799). Another difficulty popped up with the title La Rabouilleuse, a professional and regional term, which indicates a ?girl who churns up the water of a stream in order to make the frightened crabs come to the surface.? Recently I discovered an Amazonian term which could translate the French word into Portuguese; but at that date it occurred neither to the translator nor to myself. Looking into the history of the novel, I then noted that the first edition in book form had the title Un Ménage de Garçon; and so I had recourse to Um Conchego de Solteirão (Bachelor?s Nook), which in fact had been used for an earlier edition in Portugal.
(Among the 89 works brought together in the Comédie Humaine, there were some titles, which, though faithfully translated, would not allow for easy identification: for example, O Romeiral, the Portuguese equivalent of La Grenadière. But since the prefaces to the volumes systematically listed the original titles, any doubt was eliminated, even without a concordance of the French and Brazilian titles at the end of the work.)
Sometimes a change is in fact a correction. Biessi, by Dostoyevsky, was translated into French as Les Possédés, taken into Portuguese as Os Possessos ; in a new translation, Rachel de Queiroz made a point of restoring to the work its true title: Os Demônios (The Demons).
There are cases in which the reason for the change is strikingly obvious. Chaines, by Howard Lee, became ?Acorrentados? (chained), because ?Correntes? (both ?chains? and ?currents?) would be ambiguous. The Eye, by Nabokov, and The Source by James A. Mitchener, were made more explicit by the same translator as O Olho Vigilante (The Watchful Eye) and A Fonte de Israel (The Source of Israel), respectively.
What to do, however, when there is intentional ambiguity in the original title? This is what happens in La Jalousie, by Robbe-Grillet. The word, in French, is ambiguous: it refers both to the jealousy of the suspicious husband, and the bamboo blind from which he spies his wife. The English translator proposed The Blind, also ambiguous, but according to Richard Howard, the publisher, ?fearing that the book would be taken for a treatise on ophthalmology?, preferred the translation Jealousy, for which it was later reproved by some critics.
In the cases in which the title, to the despair of the translator, is an intentional pun, not all are lucky enough to come up with a translation as ingenious as that of Oscar Mendes, who rendered the title of the Wilde comedy as A Importancia de Ser Prudente (with in Portugal, for Maria Isabel Morna Braga, become A Importância de Ser Amável).
Many think that a poorly chosen title can have an adverse effect on the ?fate? of a book. Günther W. Lorenz attributed the lack of impact in German-speaking countries of El Túnel, by Ernesto Sábato, to the infelicitous Der Mahler und das Fenster (The Painter and the Window). I imagine that the publisher wanted to avoid an exact translation because there was already a very successful German novel by that name, Bernhard Kellermann?s Der Tunnel. And on the other hand, a felicitous change can improve matters for the book, as happened in Brazil with a work by General de Gaulle, Vers l?Armée de Métier, an excessively technical title, which was replaced with the much more expressive ??And France would have won??
These are suppositions by the publisher or the translator, which are difficult to prove. At any rate, the belief in the importance of the title must be often be responsible for the adoption of more grandiose appellations, which speak better to the imagination of the reader. Thus King?s Row, by H. Bellamann, became Em cada Coração um Pecado (In Every Heart a Sin), Shannon?s Way, by A.J. Cronin, became Anos de Tormenta (Years of Torment), and Hauser?s Memory, by C. Siodmark, became Mémoria Assassina (Murderous Memory). With respect to this last title, my friend Roldão Simas Filho raises the objection that it spoils the surprise of the denouement, and so he prefers the variant used in Portugal, O Cérebro de Hauser (Hauser?s Brain).
Sometimes the changes can leave us baffled. Vidas Secas (Dry Lives) seems quite expressive: and yet the German publisher, without consulting the translator Willy Keller, changed it to Nach Eden ist weit (Long Road to Eden), thus improperly giving Graciliano?s book a Protestant, Faulknerian or Steinbeckian flavor. But another title by the same author, S. Bernardo, remained thus in German, though it means nothing for the German reader, or perhaps may even confuse him, leading him to think of the S. Bernardo Pass between Switzerland and Italy. (The Hungarian translator felt it necessary to give an idea of the content, in using Farkasmember (Wolfman).
In the same way, one could wonder at the fact that a dozen translators of different nationalities have used Dom Casmurro for the novel by Machado de Assis (only the Czech translator was bold enough to translate it), when a translation would have been relatively easy).
The partial reproduction of the title Grande Sertão: (Veredas) by the German, Italian and Castilian translators of Guimarães Rosa is more explicable, given the indefinability of the term.
A practical conclusion that could be drawn from all these examples is that it would be highly desirable for the practice, already adopted by some Brazilian publishers, of including the original title on the verso of the frontispiece, to become more widespread.
We have not spoken until now of the theater, where the replacement of one title by another which is more eye-catching is even more frequent than it is in the publishing houses, nor of the cinema, where it is more the rule than the exception, leading more than once to grotesque excesses, above all towards the horrific and the macabre. This arbitrariness sometimes results in a film failing to attract the public for which it is intended. Thus the film based on the magnificent novel by Ferenc Molnár, The Paul Street Boys, an authentic best-seller for children in Brazil as well as in Hungary passed by unnoticed because of a meaningless title: ?This Land Is Ours?. An examination of the original titles and their translations by the Brazilian film industry would make for amusing reading.
In conclusion: we do not mean to condemn title changes in totum. We would simply like to remind sensitive translators that the title is part of the work, and thus, except in special cases, it is better to retain it whenever possible. But if, for one reason or another, it should be altered, the original title should be noted on the poster, or, in the case of a book, on the verso of the title page.

2003-09-10T06:38:00.000-07:00

Comments!

The comments are back on line! Hooray!....Now you readers can use them!!!!

2003-09-07T18:02:00.000-07:00

Horrific new weapon

being developed by the US Department of Defense. It uses hafnium.
Read about it here.

2003-09-07T16:40:00.000-07:00

FForde

I have been reading the three fantastical novels by Jasper Fforde. There are interesting stories and interviews about him and his work here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and
here.

2003-09-07T10:55:00.000-07:00

Howard

my dear friend Howard from college has been living in Germany (Munich) for the last 23 years. I visited him there in May 1991,
and he came to Cape Cod, where, with two other friends, we spent a week on a 24-foot sailboat. I had not seen him since, until yesterday, when he came to visit with his namorada, Barbara, who is German. We went for a walk by the canal, and then drove to New Hope, had a nice Mexican lunch, and walked over to River Horse Brewery (where Laura and Sergio have visited as well). Howard agreed with me that their "Hop Hazard" brew was excellent, and we both took six bottles home with us. I enjoyed meeting Barbara, and speaking German with the two of them. Verdict: my German is grammatically flawless...just slow. Nobody to speak it with here, and of course, no nice German pop music to listen to.

2003-09-07T10:50:00.000-07:00

Ju and Ma

gave me a fita last year in April in Paraty. I made my three wishes. Yesterday the fita finally wore out.

2003-09-07T10:49:00.000-07:00

Latino Quakers

My friend Alvin Figueroa from the College is a Quaker, a member of a Meeting in California, and has been attending at the small meeting in Rancocas (south of Trenton) where he lives. Now he has started attending my meeting (Crosswicks). Alvin is from Puerto Rico, and is on the language faculty at TCNJ. And we have a new family attending as well. Pedro is from Panama, and is married to an American woman. His father was an American who fell in love with a Panamanian woman, sold everything he had moved to Panama, married his beloved, and has been there ever since. So Pedro speaks English without an accent, Spanish (of course), and is also fluent in Portuguese. After the meeting Alvin, Pedro and I chatted in a melange of English, Spanish, and Portuguese until Pedro's wife (named Laura), dragged him away to go home with their children.

2003-09-07T10:42:00.000-07:00

Travels

Last weekend (Aug. 30-31) I had a very nice visit with my cousin Rob and his wife Leslie in Alexandria, Virginia. I drove down Sat. AM (a quick trip in only a little over 3 hours, with no traffic or delays anywhere), we had a nice lunch, and then went into DC. The Spy museum was already full, so we went to the National Gallery (a wonderful show of late 19th century French "small" paintings) and then to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial, very beautiful and "unmonumental" with quotes from the great man. So different from what passes for public discourse nowadays. And then R and L cooked a fabulous dinner which we washed down with nice white wine, chatting late into the evening. Sunday I was working, so I had to drive back early.

2003-09-04T12:45:00.000-07:00

City Living

The local newspaper reported that a 24-year resident on the next block had been arrested for selling heroin in the street.

2003-09-04T12:44:00.000-07:00

MORE TELEMANN

Complete Trio Sonatas for Recorder, Oboe and Continuo. Alfredo Bernardini, oboe; Lorenzo Cavasanti, recorder; Caroline Boersma, cello; Giorgio Mandolesi, bassoon; Sergio Ciomei, harpsichord; Monica Piccinini, soprano. STRADIVARIUS STR 33595 (59:10).

Trio sonatas: TWV 42: e6, F9, c7, a6, c2, F15. Ja, Jesu deinen ruhm zu mehren for soprano, recorder, oboe and continuo.

Telemann produced the largest and most rewarding body of work for the recorder, and it is land that has been well-tilled since the beginning of the early music revival (I remember a purchase of an LP about 1970 with especially disastrous recordings of these works), and since there have been notably fine recordings as well, it takes some chutzpah to go down these paths once again.
Bernardini (new to these ears) and Cavasanti manage to strike just the right tone for these works, which are in the thorough-going Italian style of the composer’s middle years, with little or no admixture of French. This is not deep or difficult music – to make it “go” the performers must bring out all the possibilities of expression and shape, so that it carries the listener along (in contrast to Bach, who is “performer-proof” to a degree). I am particularly taken by Bernardini’s playing – he has a beautifully controlled lyrical tone, so that he can give every note and phrase a shape that lives.
Soprano Piccinini fills out the disc with one of the cantatas from the continuation of the Harmonisches Gottedienst (points off: no source given, nor any text or translation).
A fine disc.

2003-09-04T12:43:00.000-07:00

TELEMANN

Flute Concertos. Emmanuel Pahud, flute; Rainer Kussmaul directing the Berliner Barock Solisten. EMI 7243 5 57397 2 8 (66:26).

Concerto for flute, strings and continuo in G, TWV 51:G2. Concerto for flute, violin, cello, strings and continuo from Tafelmusik, TWV 53:A2. Concerto for two flutes, violone, strings and continuo in A minor, TWV 53:a1. Concerto for flute, oboe d’amore, viola d’amore, strings and continuo in E, TWV 53:E1. Concerto for flute, strings and continuo in D, TWV 51:D2.

Though my colleague Laura Rónai has raved about this god of the flute, I have not had occasion to listen to his work until now. Often, though not always, the use of a modern instrument in older repertoire brings with it habits of expression, whether they be articulation (or the lack of it), the use of vibrato, a spinto tone, and so forth, so that what is inappropriate in the interpretation is not the use of anachronistic instruments, but the “software” that goes with them. And this is where Pahud shines most particularly. He has taken the lessons of the one-keyed flute to heart, playing with a mellow tone, a cantabile and naturally inflected line, and his articulations are clear and unforced. (Perhaps the next step is to move to the one-keyed flute?) Pahud’s ornamentation is also completely stylish, so much that so that one could imagine it came from the master’s pen (the page of the G major in the booklet allows the listener to compare what is written with what Pahud has created). The playing of the Barock Solisten is fine, if with a somewhat more modern tinge than Pahud.
The repertoire includes some familiar works (the Tafelmusik concerto, and the concerto for d’amore instruments), and also two premieres, the delicious G major concerto, and a double concerto (with the wonderful Jacques Zoon).
A highly recommendable disc.

2003-09-04T11:11:00.000-07:00

DOLLÉ

Pieces de viole avec la basse continue, op. 2 (1737). Petr Wagner, viola da gamba; Jacques Ogg, harpsichord. DORIAN DOR-93246.

Charles Dollé is not well-known, even to the gambist. Little is known about the master, not even the dates of his birth and death, and he left six collections of chamber music, published between 1737 and 1754, one of which is lost. Of the rest all are either for viol or pardessus de viole (though the trios op.1 and solos/duos op. 4 mention violins or flutes as alternatives). Of the surviving works all but one set is available in facsimile.
Though this recording is listed as a world premiere, the second suite has been twice recorded already, by W. Kuijken (1979) and Hsu (1977). Though interest in the French Baroque has grown enormously in recent years, it says something about its reception by the public that such delightful and well-constructed music has waited so long to be recorded. To my ears (admittedly those of a convert) Dollé manages to blend learning (his often polyphonic writing for the solo viol) and charm (the fetching melodies and dance rhythms of the French tradition) in perfect proportions, so that neither intellect or foot feels left out. Petr Wagner’s playing is fluid, convincing, full in sound, yet aristocratic, cantabile, sensitively inflected, and he is capably partnered by Jacques Ogg. Good sound from Dorian. Warmly recommended.

2003-09-04T11:10:00.001-07:00

BLAVET

Sonates op. 2. Trio Noname (Peter Holtslag, flute; Ketil Haugsand, harpsichord; Rainer Zipperling, viola da gamba, cello). GLISSANDO 779 035-2 (79:49).

Michel Blavet, despite his leading position in the flute world of late Baroque Paris, produced a small number of works – of which the two sets of six solos with continuo are the most notable (compare this his contemporary and friend Telemann, for example). They are relatively simple in style, combining Italian and French traits in the op. 2 set (1732), with Italian predominating in the later collection (op. 3, 1740). This accessibility, both musical and technical, has meant that these are among the most recorded of flute sonatas for this period, with at least five other available discs with some or all of op. 2 on the market.
Peter Holtslag has been a well-known and recorded performer on the recorder for some years, but to my knowledge this is his first outing on flute. In reviewing earlier discs I found his playing to be technically fluent and musical, but a little too cautious (in contrast to the general tendency for the recorder virtuoso to amp up the flamboyance to a dangerous level). And here as well he has fine command of his instruments (flutes by Allain-Dupré and Cameron at A-392), musical nuance – but something in me wishes for a little more danger, taking the curves faster than strictly legal or safe, some real digging for expression. There is more adventure to be had here than meets the ear. A capable reading, but not the ne plus ultra.

2003-09-04T11:10:00.000-07:00

BOISMORTIER

Daphnis & Chloe. Hervé Niquet directing Le Concert Spirituel. GLOSSA GCD 921605 (45:38, 55:44)

Boismortier, like Telemann, was pilloried by the critics for his enormous output, except that in the latter case, those throwing stones were twentieth-century contemporaries, and in the former, his French compatriots, perhaps envious of the fortune of a half-million écus, garnered through the sales of his works. The great preponderance of these were instrumental compositions, with a particular emphasis on the flute, then the preferred instrument of the gentleman amateur (would it were still so!). And thus Boismortier’s recorded presence in our day has been chiefly the chamber music.
Operas, then as now, were bottomless pits down which to pour money, and so Boismortier’s stage works are few and late. Daphnis et Chloe was the last to be produced, premiering in 1747, and revived in 1752. This pastoral was popular enough to be parodied when the revival appeared.
For one familiar with Boismortier’s small-scale works it is fascinating to hear how his muse responds to the stage. The aficionado’s ear will immediately compare the idiom to that of Rameau. Boismortier’s writing is considerably simpler, with little counterpoint, and melodies that are less “characteristic” than the immediately recognizable tunes of his greater colleague. The instrumental palate is also less varied, with the flutes playing a prominently role. Ne’ertheless, there is much to enjoy here, with the composer deftly connecting the musical strands in the larger fabric of scene and act. The singing and playing of Niquet’s band is first rate, and while you may not be drawn in by the drama, you can hardly fail to be captivated by the charms of the song and dance.

FIVE STARS

Tom Moore

2003-08-31T09:36:00.000-07:00

Guerreiro

Read my interview with the important Brazilian composer here.

2003-08-29T05:43:00.000-07:00

Vem, morena, pros meu braços
Vem, morena, vem dançar
Quero ver tu requebrando
Quero ver tu requebrar
Quero ver tu remexendo
O resfulego da sanfona até que o Sol raiar

Esse teu fungado quente
Bem no pé do meu pescoço
Arrepia o corpo da gente
Faz o veio ficar moço
E o coração de repente
Bota o sangue em alvoroço

Vem , morena, pros meus braços....

Esse teu suor sargado
É gostoso e tem sabor
Pois o teu corpo suado
Com esse cheiro de fulo
Tem um gosto temperado
Dos tempero do amor

2003-08-28T12:13:00.000-07:00

Duos with Kim

I spent this morning playing the duos, op. 11 of Berbiguier, the duos, op. 25, of Kummer,
and the Duo and Mot pour Laura of Sergio Roberto de Oliveira with the excellent flutist Kim Reighley down in Wilmington Delaware. We will play a concert including the Kummer (nos. 1, 3), Mot, Companion Piece by Mark Haggerty, and some music for baroque flutes at The College of New Jersey this fall, and it will be recorded. Date is still TBA.

2003-08-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

The art of the story

Lots of free stories in etext....

2003-08-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

Anti-mirth

Canada prohibits Canadians from smiling for their passport photos

2003-08-27T08:58:00.000-07:00

Towards a history of literary translation in Brazil

By Paulo Rónai
Translated by Tom Moore

One who some day comes to write the history of literary translation in Brazil will note a phenomenon similar to that of the urbanization of the country. In the great European cities there was a slow and progressive architectural evolution, which allowed the formation of central neighborhoods with esthetic qualities, and stamped each city with its own unmistakable character. The evolution of our Brazilian metropolises was feverish and excessively quick. Neighborhoods with a provincial aspect, unpaved streets, without drains, found their little houses replaced overnight with sky-scrapers, without having passed through any intermediary stages. Elsewhere buildings of four and five stories were demolished far before living out their normal span. Entire streets disappeared to make way for viaducts, tunnels, subterranean passageways. In the blink of an eye we found that in the midst of these radical transformations we had lost exactly that which in other times once justified the creation of a city: a safer and happier life among squares, tree-lined avenues, with newsstands, rambles for the flaneur, with space for living.

2003-08-26T20:53:00.000-07:00

Friends

are what life is all about. I am just back from dinner and music with Tracy Richardson and Mark Haggerty in Wilmington Delaware. They are both fabulous cooks. Tonight's repast - Ziti with Carbonara sauce. Delicious. And fresh peaches and vanilla ice cream for dessert. All elegantly presented.
Tracy and I rehearsed for Williamsburg (next month). Program:
Bach A major sonata, a nice Franz Benda sonata for flute and obligato cembalo that I hadn't even seen before, let alone heard, and the Handel G major sonata. As well as a movement from Mark's suite, and the variations by Sweelinck on Mein junges Leben hat ein End. And a tired drive home, since I rose this AM at 5:45.

2003-08-25T06:33:00.000-07:00

Hooray!

Renata, my cleaning lady, came this morning to spruce up my little house. She had come by yesterday to get a key and we had a long talk. She is learning English, and usually can get by, but since I understand Czech (her native tongue) if she needs to, she can switch to Czech. Her job gives her insight into the daily life of the American haute bourgeoisie. Some of her thoughts: America is a good place for money, but for Americans, the heart is NOT important. Not like in Europe. American parents don't spend time with their children. Instead the children play computer games. American houses are TOO big for the Americans who live in them, even with the children there, and when they leave, then they will be REALLY too big. Americans are messy (Renata thinks that Laura must be one out of a hundred women that are actually neat....)
I am so happy that she came today!!!!

2003-08-20T13:13:00.000-07:00

Fallacies in translation

By Paulo Rónai
Translated by Tom Moore

One of the fallacies in translation is the illusion that it is possible to learn it by means of treatises on the subject. Now, how would one organize a translation manual, if this art (or trade, if you prefer) is resistant to any sort of systematization? In reality, one learns to translate by translating. This is not to say that the subject should not be contemplated in writing; simply that one should expect from a manual on translation the precision and efficiency of a treatise on optics or geometry.
An example of an attempt at systematization can be found in the book The Art of Translation, by Theodore Savory . In looking at the theoretical possibility of a perfect translation, the writer divides the originals which may be translated into four categories:

1. simple information of a practical nature
2. common literary works the translation of which is only a question of routine
3. literary works which demand an artistic effort on the part of the translator
4. technical and scientific texts.

From his point of view, perfection can be attained in the first category – which
includes reporting in the newspaper, a tourist guide, an annual report etc., and also in the fourth. As far as the second is concerned, there perfection is of no interest to the average reader, who is only interested in the content; and thus the problem is restricted to the third group, that of works of literary art.
more later....

2003-08-19T18:49:00.000-07:00

Roubado do Centro de Estudo em Filosofia Americana:

A filosofia perde Michael Wrigley

O professor inglês amável, educado e inteligente das áreas da filosofia da mente e da lógica, radicado no Brasil, faleceu esta semana. Há uma década no Brasil, Michael Wrigley não foi aproveitado pelo nosso país como deveria ter sido. Agora é tarde. Não há mais como faze-lo.

Michael escreveu pouco, e o que sabia sobre Ramsey, Wittgenstein e Davidson nem sempre nos foi passado, uma vez que ainda engatinhamos em estudos desses autores e, talvez, por isso mesmo, não pudemos lhe oferecer o público que ele merecia.

Mas o fato do Brasil estar aquém de Michael Wrigley, nunca fez dele alguém que se achasse melhor que os outros. Solícito com os colegas, Michel dava informações preciosas a cada conversa, sem nunca pensar em receber qualquer coisa em troca. Atencioso com os alunos, Michael recebeu alguns dos meus orientandos, que não tinham formação filosófica, com muito carinho. Encaminhou mais que correta e frutiferamente os que já sabiam algo de filosofia. Ensinou o básico para quem precisava do básico. Falou coisas mais complexas quando, em círculos restritos, podia ser devidamente compreendido. Assim foi quando de suas participações nas reuniões da ANPOF e quando assumiu, junto com Martha Christina Martins, a coordenação do grupo de estudos em Wittgenstein na USP, a convite do professor João Virgílio, ex-orientando do professor Luís Henrique Lopes, todos eles conhecedores profundos da obra de Wittgenstein. Tal grupo vem publicando os “Cadernos Wittgenstein”, e certamente não existiria mais se não fosse pelo período em que Michael, gratuitamente e sem qualquer vínculo oficial, se deslocou de Campinas até São Paulo quase que semanalmente para fazer sobreviver o círculo de estudos, uma vez que tanto João Virgílio quanto Luís Henrique se encontravam fora do país ou com serviços para além da conta.

Michael estava há um ano preparando um livro introdutório, a meu pedido, sobre filosofia da mente. A obra ficou inacabada. Mas as idéias ali contidas mostram a genialidade de alguém que, antes de tudo, fazia da filosofia algo simples, por mais complexa que ela fosse – como de fato é.

Conhecedor profundo das teses centrais de Donald Davidson, de quem foi aluno, Michael foi um dos principais revisores do livro do professor Simon Evnine, Donald Davidson, um dos principais estudos introdutórios ao pensamento do filósofo norte-americano, na chamada “segunda fase” de sua obra. Por isso, quisera eu trazer Michael Wrigley, de toda maneira, para o GT-Pragmatismo da ANPOF. Todavia, Michael era ocupado demais, pois não priorizava demandas, atendia a todos como se não fosse o cérebro internacional e brilhante que era. Não deixava de tomar uma cerveja com os amigos. Não deixava de se engalfinhar nos problemas de lógica que seus estudos em Ramsey demandavam. Era mentalmente sagaz, corajoso, audacioso mesmo. Ao mesmo tempo, solitário. Sabia que estava sozinho. Poderia não ter ficado só, pois qualquer universidade no exterior o teria acolhido com honras. Mas ficou no Brasil. Algo nos trópicos o atraía. Talvez a idéia de que pudesse ser feliz a despeito de se estar no Terceiro Mundo – uma idéia que deveria fazer todo professor de filosofia tentar ser mais democrático sem que isso venha a significar aceitar que teses de mestrados e doutorados possam ser textos ridículos, como em geral vemos por aí. Michael ensinou lógica e tolerância, rigor com alegria. Importância sem pedantismo. É preciso mais?

Paulo Ghiraldelli Jr., Jardim Acapulco, 13 de agosto de 2003.

2003-08-18T10:35:00.000-07:00

cora

2003-08-18T05:04:00.000-07:00

City of Brotherly Love

In August virtually every one leaves town here in NJ - I must be the only one left. So on the weekend I went to Philadelphia, where this is still something happening. Saturday was rainy, so I walked along Walnut St. and shopped the various clothing stores. Kenneth Cole was interesting - very modern - weird shoes, strange interesting jazz on the muzak, clothes that looked fairly boiola to me....I didn't see anything nice till I got to Banana Republic - two shirts which were $49 off the original tagged price. So they came home with me.
Sunday was a pleasant afternoon in the park at Rittenhouse Sq. - each park bench had one or two people reading books. I made it through about 150 pages of a book on the hat trade in Ecuador (by Tom Miller), before I went to browse at the Barnes and Noble on the square. This weekend I also read "Was it something I said?" by Valerie Block - a "love story" about two not very sympathetic characters.....sad.....

2003-08-17T13:14:00.000-07:00

LUNCH
Hermano and I just came back from Meg´s house, where we ate a fabulous lunch made by Selma. Piemontese rice, shrimp, vegetables, a luscious salad... and a HUGE chocolate cake. Somebody must have told them that I like chocolate.
We got out of there full of presents: shoes, more chocolate... I am getting very spoiled, indeed.

2003-08-15T22:36:00.000-07:00

SAUDADES
Tom has complained about my disappearance: hey Laura, where are you?
Mea Culpa, I have been away from Mostly Music, and lots has happened since the last time I wrote. We had a wonderful concert series in SP, (with the participation of many friends, including Tom, Laurie Heimes, Bruno Procopio and all the boys from Camerata Quantz) and we have also been playing all around Rio.
Almost every week now we have had a musical soirée. We are now incorporating another cello (Luciano) and a new soprano (Paloma). Next sunday we will have a new harpsichordist (Clara) and a new lute player (André). So we are slowly becoming a large group...
In the meantime, as you know, Michael died. He was a wonderful friend, and I miss him enormously already. Today I found out that he left a note in his computer, leaving me his collection of Cds and music-related books. I guess I will just have to build a new CD shelf.... He also left me some money (I don´t know how much exactly). His brother Richard called me today, and I was paralyzed upon hearing his voice - just like Michael´s! he seems to be equally sweet and direct. It felt so weird to be getting in touch with his "other" life, and only after his death. Poor Richard, lost in an unknown universe, burying his brother amongst people he never even met, not understanding what people say to him....
This whole situation left me strangely affected; sad, and moved and loved. But mainly, sad. It will be fabulous to get all these new musical guests, all these sounds chosen by my friend. But I can´t quite reconcile myself to the idea that he won´t be around for us to discuss each interpretation, as we so often did.
I don´t believe in God and Heaven. But if I did, I would be wishing that the angels play beautiful music just for you, Michael.
PS: BTW, if you see Mark, send him my love.

2003-08-15T13:28:00.000-07:00

Settling Accounts

By Paulo Rónai
Translated by Tom Moore

Pascal’s dictum, “Le moi est haïssable” applies to no one more aptly than the translator, the modest intermediator of the messages of others. But perhaps his confidences concerning his motivations, his work methods, his difficulties, and the solutions to which he has had recourse can have some interest for his colleagues in his métier, and even for the public in general. Even more so when, as in my case, his practice extends so to speak to all the modalities of translation, and to the greater part of related activities. I want to cover all of them rapidly, to suggest ideas and open perspectives, rather than to draw conclusions or teach some tricks of the trade.
More here....

2003-08-15T13:20:00.000-07:00

Mulier

femina nulla bona est, uel, si bona contigit una,
nescio quo fato est res mala facta bona.

-Pentadius

2003-08-15T05:35:00.000-07:00

I know you are out there...

because the stats say that you have come to visit.

So when you visit, why not say a little hello in the comments? please?
a gente ta tao sozinha....

2003-08-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

Women and shopping

from Luiz's fotolog....

incrível a capacidade das mulheres de comprarem coisas de que não precisam.

2003-08-14T07:10:00.000-07:00

TELEMANN: Tafelmusik (from Parts I and II). Florilegium. CHANNEL CLASSICS CCS SA 19102 (74:31).

Ouverture – Suite in E minor. Quatuor in G major. Trio in E-flat major. Conclusion in E minor. Quatuor in d minor.

Can we have too much Telemann? Generations thought so, thought that even a pizzico of Telemann to balance the mounds of Bach was unwarranted. And so the many delights from his pen were little-known and little-recorded. All this by way of prologue to saying that finally, in 2003, the works on this disc must be familiar to any Telemann lover, particularly the two quartets, the latter beloved of recorderists. Does the recording from Florilegium open new vistas on these works? The instruments sound lovely, the ensemble is excellent, but something is lacking. To these ears, it is breath, leisure, play. Too often the music rushes long without a pause, without a space, with no articulation marking the difference between what is a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph in Telemann’s poetry. What is the hurry? It is not the tempos in themselves that are hasty – they are well-chosen, but that there is no attention to inflection.
The recording has many good qualities, but this defect means that it is not at the top. Pity.

2003-08-14T07:09:00.001-07:00

POGLIETTI. Ricercars. REUTTER: Toccata. Canzona. STRUNCK. Ricercar. Luca Guglielmi, harpsichord. ORF ALTE MUSIK CD 321 (50:31).

This is a disc that I ought to like, would love to like – but something in me refuses to warm to it. Luca Guglielmi, still in his twenties, with a capable technique, is making his solo debut with a set of works that has not been recorded before, by a composer skilled in keyboard writing who has received a fair amount of attention over the last few years, and so I would love to hail two discoveries. And yet…
Alessandro Poglietti, another Italian whogravitated toward the job opportunities in the Empire (where he must certainly have known Sances, reviewed elsewhere in this issue). He is most well-known today for the Nightingale, a large suite (almost an hour) written for the wedding of Leopold I, and with many depictions of national musics – Czech bagpipes, Dutch recorders, and so forth. That is exactly the sort of whimsy that is not present here. These ricercars are extremely well-behaved, and would certainly not alarm a cleric at mass. But that is not a recommendation for a whole program of them, which will be likely to weary any ear. Even the individual works do not reach out and captivate.
Of documentary interest, but not likely to have broad appeal.

2003-08-14T07:09:00.000-07:00

EXTASES BAROQUES. Maria Cristina Kiehr, soprano; Christina Pluhar, triple harp, theorbo, guitar; Sylvie Moquet, viola da gamba, violoncino; Matthias Spaeter, archlute; Jean-Marc Aymes, organ, harpsichord. L’EMPREINTE DIGITALE ED 13119 (63:21)

SANCES: Ardet cor meum. Domine Deus. O bone Jesu. Lettamini in Domine. Audite me. Usurpator tiranno. Altre le vie. Risiede più. Filli mirando il ciel. Misera hor si ch’il pianto. Accenti queruli. KAPSBERGER: Toccata IX. Toccata V. ROSSI: Passacaille.

Giovanni Felice Sances (1600-1679) seems to have begun his career as an exceptional boy soprano in Rome, with operatic roles at age 14. His earliest published works date to the early 1630s, at which time he was in Padua. Shortly thereafter he moved to Vienna, and spent the rest of a long and successful career at the imperial court, finally becoming choirmaster at almost seventy years of age. Virtually all of his output is vocal, with published books of both cantatas and motets for one to three voices with continuo, as well as many unpublished choral works.The motets and cantatas recorded here belong to the early baroque, with notable use of repetitive bass patterns, the emphasis being rather on the latter, tuneful, part of the “recitar cantando” in the new style. Like Purcell, Sances is able to create a compelling musical fabric over a simple framework.
Kiehr’s voice in this 1994 is dark, with a timbre approaching that of a countertenor, but at the same time light in body, with very little vibrato (the sort of sound Quantz might advocate for the flute).
Her diction is excellent (all the more important as there is no booklet, at least in this release), her pitch superb, her coloratura clear - exceptional singing.

2003-08-14T07:08:00.000-07:00

BACH Six partitas, BWV 825-830. Kenneth Weiss, harpsichord. SATIRINO SR011 (67:33, 69:47).

In his note to this disc Weiss points out that the six partitas could never be assimilated by a listener in one concert or in one listening session, that indeed they have “too much protein, too much confectionery”. This is indeed the problem with each individual partita, or even movement. Bach creates inexorable structures, architecture (Weiss’s protein), rather than speech, in a sense, so that the player cannot help but be carried along by it without ever a pause for reflection or breath. And hung on this structure is an amazing filigree of decoration (Weiss’s confection), all of it crying out to be inflected, so that each melodic moment has its due. But no, it must fit in with the structure. The two elements are at cross purposes – a dish can be a meat course, or a dessert, but not both at the same time.
When I began to listen here I was impressed by the ability of Weiss to create nuance for each gesture, with impressive control of shape and phrasing, especially in the opening of the first partita. But overall it seems that Bach’s structure wins out, so that the listener has the sense of a great machine that has but to be turned on, and the music spills out. Would slower tempos help? Perhaps here and there – the Rondeaux of the second partita rushes along in one, despite its 16th note triplets. But in general what I miss is either more French character (sweetness) or Italian (caprice) to moderate the great man’s innate and heavy Germanity. Does it say something that the cover art is a mountainous scene in black and white without a speck of humanity to be seen?

2003-08-14T06:59:00.000-07:00

The Limits of Poetic Translation

By Paulo Rónai
Translated by Tom Moore
The untranslatability of poetry is a cliché which I do not intend to revisit in these lines. This does mean, of course that poetry should not be translated: it is still better to see that “stuffed sunbeam” of which Heine spoke, than to see no sunbeam at all, and remain deaf for ever to the message of poems written in languages which we do not understand. “Poetry is what gets lost in translation” said Robert Frost in another now-famous formulation, and here again I do not entirely agree.
red the rest here

2003-08-14T06:10:00.000-07:00

Dia da marmota

So...

what would Phil's reaction have been if at some indefinite time after he finally made it to Feb. 3, with the love of a good woman, he mysteriously woke up one morning and it was that same Feb. 2 again?

just wondering....

2003-08-13T21:03:00.000-07:00

today's culture

Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Songs of Songs. Translating another PRonai essay on translation. Another batch of discs to review for Goldberg: Pahud is a god of the flute (Telemann flute concertos). A nice disc of Dolle viol music.
An excellent stage work by Boismortier (French Baroque music is fabulous!!!)
A fine disc of Telemann trio sonatas. And dinner - a delicious salad at Cuba Libre. Ah, and, Bia, I finally watched Groundhog Day. Very well done....

2003-08-13T12:29:00.000-07:00

Five years ago

I was in Brazil for the first time, and five years ago last night was the first time that I performed with Laura, on the little stage at IBEU in Copacabana (Aug. 12, 1998).
What a lot has happened since then!

2003-08-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

Gather ye rosebuds...

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend
Before we too into the dust descend;
Dust into dust, and under dust, to lie;
Sans wine, sans song, sans singer and – sans end!

Omar Khayyam, trans. Edward Fitzgerald

“Ah, vem, vivamos mais que a Vida, vem,
Antes que em pó nos deponham também,
Pó sobre pó, e sob o pó, pousados,
Sem Cor, sem Sol, sem Som, sem Sonho – sem!”

Edward Fitzgerald, trans. Augusto de Campos

2003-08-12T06:36:00.000-07:00

Traitors

We Traitors
By Marcos Santarrita
Translated by Tom Moore

The expression traduttore, traditore (translator, traitor) is well-known, and practically a proverb – more a witticism than a verity. The most famous translation, the Vulgate, the translation of the Bible into Latin by St. Jerome, is still current, with the force of law, after 1500 years. For a large part of the Modern Age, many of the Greek and Roman classics which shaped the Western mind were translations of translations –from the original into Arabic, and from the Arabic into Latin or other European languages.
continues here

2003-08-11T12:15:00.000-07:00

Elvira Vigna

My review of the most recent novel by this carioca writer is at the Brazilmax website
here.

2003-08-09T10:35:00.000-07:00

I am so sad. My friend Michael is dead.

2003-08-08T10:04:00.000-07:00

The Comédie Humaine in Brazil: history of an edition

By Paulo Ronai
Translated by Tom Moore

It has gotten to be an old story, that of the Brazilian edition of Balzac’s Comédie Humaine published by Editora Globo (1946-1955), which I had the honor of directing. I have already had occasion to refer to it twice previously in print. The seventeen volumes of the collection occupy considerable space on the bookshelves of our libraries, having nourished the spirit and excited the imagination of thousands of readers. “I consider this editorial enterprise one of the most important ever in the history of Brazil” wrote Erico Verissimo. And Eugênio Gomes, another connoisseur of books, who would later direct the Biblioteca Nacional of Rio de Janeiro went even farther: “I do not believe that Balzac has found anywhere, outside of France, a more appropriate frame for his greatness.”
The story begins in 1943.
Read the rest here

2003-08-08T09:22:00.000-07:00

"What would you do if you were stuck in one place and everything was exactly the same and nothing that you did mattered?"

-Phil, Groundhog Day

2003-08-08T06:36:00.000-07:00

Ronai on Zweig on Balzac

more, here

2003-08-07T12:24:00.000-07:00

Nobody home

No comments, no readers, no Laura.

2003-08-06T15:53:00.000-07:00

Au naturel

Read about the English vogue for naked hiking and nude rambling.

2003-08-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

New projects in the pipeline

The ATA (American Translators Association) Chronicle will be publishing my translations of two essays on translation by Marcos Santarrita (novelist and translator himself).

And the Flutist Quarterly will publish my article on the 19th-century French flutist Remusat.

2003-08-05T05:59:00.000-07:00

Flog!

This blog now has a flog (a foto-log)
at www.fotolog.net/mostlymusic .

2003-08-04T14:39:00.000-07:00

Word of the day

The word is grugunzar, that is to meditate, ponder, rack one's brains, something I do a great deal of.
Alas, this word is not current - seems to almost not to appear on the web. More's the pity.

2003-08-04T12:43:00.000-07:00

Virtues and Virtualities of the Catholic Language

By Paulo Ronai
Translated by Tom Moore

Many people of this most loyal and heroic city of Sao Sebastiao do Rio de Janeiro must know some aspect of the protean personality of my friend Charles Astor, but few will have managed to breach the wall of modesty behind which he is so well able to hide the imposing ensemble of his multifarious qualities. A noted teacher of parachuting and acrobatic gymnastics, one of the most competent of antiquarians, cryptographer emeritus, a worthy storyteller, lucid essayist, in addition to these many endowments he adds broad erudition and universal curiosity. As he is also helpful by vocation, once he hears that one of his friends has sat down to study some preposterous subject he will put at their disposition all of the treasures of his erudition and library.
It was thus that, knowing that I was entangled in investigations into artificial languages, he recently offered me a rare and valuable old book, a plan for a universal language by Dr. Alberto Liptay, a copy made still more valuable by the dedication from the author to the editor-in-chief of the daily O Pa?s, inscribed in 1892, when he passed through Rio de Janeiro aboard the cruiser Presidente Pinto.
For quite some time I had been intrigued by the name of this polygraph, a name which without the shadow of a doubt was of Hungarian origin. Though there are no explicit references to this fact, allusions to the Magyar tongue make it more than plausible. Coming from the distant banks of the Danube, how would Dr. Liptay have come to be doctor for the Chilean Navy and attached to the Naval Commision of chile in Paris, after taking an active part in the military expedition against Peru? These few facts make one imagine one of those romantic biographies in which a flame, suddenly snuffed out in the Old World, unexpectedly is lit once more in the New after mysterious vicissitudes.
"During his marches through the ancient Empire of the Incas, the author was much preoccupied with a rational solution to the cosmoglottic problem, which indeed constituted the substance of his philosophical reflections, which were more than once interrupted by the whistling of enemy bullets." While the "peacemaking dvision of the victorious Chilean Army" was resting after having clambered up ravines at an altitude of 14,000 feet, Dr. Liptay, separated for months from civilized humanity, with no news from the rest of the world, with no one with whom he could exchange ideas, passed part of the icy nights which were interspersed among the torrid days mentally organizing a new language, to which he gave the name Catholic Language, and whose exposition is the topic of the book with which we are concerned.
Already in the preface he explains the reason for the name, which is to be taken not in the religious sense, but rather in the primitive sense of the Greek katholikos, that is, "general, universal". Discovering to his displeasure that in Germany and Austria, with the first waves of anti-Semitism, the adjective was taking on an exclusive and sectarian meaning, he retained it only in the title of the French and Spanish eiditons of the work, preferring to give the German edition the title Die Gemeinsprache der Kulturvoelkern (The Common Tongue of the Cultured Peoples).
The fact that it begins from a rather chimerical premise does not lessen the interest of this work: eighty years ago it was much easier to believe that human language tends to simplification and unification, and that the sluggishness of progress was due simply to the lack of a universal tongue. The Catholic Language was intended to fill this lacuna. Without expecting to replace the national languages, it proposed to to fulfill along and above them the same role that fell to literary Italian, la bella lingua, among the dialects of the Italian peninsula. Its expansion, in the thinking of the author, depended on the creation of an international linguistic union, similar to the postal-telegraphic union, or that for weights and measures. The unique originality of the project, the epigraph tells us, is the absolute exclusion of all originality. A friendly confession after so many projects with no other merit than being extravagantly original. Prior to expounding it, the author judged it necessary to proclaim the merits of a common world language, noticeable above all in the ever more frequent international congresses, and exhorted humanity to replace the linguistic anarchy of polyglottism with monoglottism. As could be foreseen, he then moves on to analyze the projects of his predecessors, commenting on them with undeniable acuity.
Among them he singles out the philosophical language of Padre Sotos Ochando, bold in its conception, but completely impractical; the Ideografia fo Sinibald Mas, ambassador of Spain to China, which requires the citizens of the world to learn 2600 agreed-upon signs without rational explication; Volapük, simple in grammar, but which dogmatically sacrificed the easy identification of the vocabulary to their brevity and pronunciability; Dr. Steiner’s Pasilingua, which consisted of a neutral grammar, applicable to any language, but which, rather than resolving the problem of vocabulary made it worse; Kosmos, by the linguist Lauda, an insufficiently simplified Latin; the Lingua Internacia – that is, Esperanto, then in its primordial stage -, ingenious in grammar, and arbitrary and fantastic in its lexicon; Saint-Max’s Bopal, a simple plagiarism of Volapük; and finally Julius Lott’s Lingua Internazional, which he accords the great merit of the greatest attention to the formation of the vocabulary, including in it what is common to the principal languages and excluding every thing that is pure idiosyncrasy or fantastic caprice.
This critical examination allows specialists in the subject to foresee the essential characteristics of the Catholic Language. Before, however, addressing them, Dr. Liptay, in yet another preamble (half of the book is made up of introductions), demonstrating a notable knowledge of linguistics, proceeds to a rapid examination of existing natural languages, in search of an international stock for his vocabulary, and also, of practical suggestions that their structure might offer to the language to be created.
What is most surprising in the laying out of the project is the conciliatory tone of the author, without that apodictic dogmatism peculiar to almost all his predecessors. Throughout the book he gives the impression of having a cordial chat with his readers, from whom he is ready to hear suggestions and criticism. Instead of imposing his invention, he seeks to have it accepted by persuasion and prides himself on explaining the reasons for each solution he has adopted.
His language is based on the grammatical and lexical inheritance from ancient Latium, such as it was preserved in the Romance languages. The alphabet adopted is that of Latin, with its imperfections eliminated. To each letter must correspond a unique sound; hence the condemnation of the letter c, due to its ambivalent pronunciation.
It will be replaced either by k, or by s. But as this would cause excessive modifications in the appearance of a large number of international words, and hence, raise objections, the cautious reformer limits himself to provisionally retaining the c as it is used in the neo-Latin languages, until the time should be propitious for its replacement by k or s. For the rest, the pronunciation of each letter would be that which it has in the majority of the neo-Latin languages, and in English, taking an average, so to speak. Hence the rejection of everything that only appears in one of these languages: the mute e, the French u, the poorly articulated vowels of English, etc.
According to the designer, the universal language should be “discovered and not invented”, or in other words, compiled from existing languages, living and dead. This is especially the case in relation to the lexicon: there are thousands of word in universal use. All that is required is to bring them together in order to obtain a language which is new, rational, simple and easy to learn.
Beginning from French (since he is writing for the French), Liptay makes an inventory of large contingents of international words: some 350 ending in –al, half a thousand in –eur, more than a thousand in –on, -tion and –sion, five hundred in –ant and –ent, as many more in –able and –ible, some 150 in –isme, 200 in –iste, 500 in –ique, as many in –té, and so forth. Adding to them some 2,000 words of varied origin, but in general use (such as alcohol, café, gas, sport, club, mathematics etc.), he arrives at a total of no less than ten thousand “catholic words”, a respectable quantity when we consider that most people go through their lives never needing even half of this stock.
This may be true, but it so happens that precisely the most common and least dispensable words are not to be found in it: indispensable nouns such as those that denote relationship, food, clothing, objects of daily use, as well as “relational” words (pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions). This fact did not escape the sagacious Dr. Liptay, who confronts the difficulty gallantly.
In constructing his basic nouns he achieves an important economy through the abolition of grammatical gender, each time that it does not coincide with natural gender. In the cases in which they coincide the procedure is the following: the radical represents the noun in its pure state, without indication of gender or sex; if there is a necessity to give this indication, -o or –a is added to the sexless radical. Thus hom signifies “any human being” , homo, “man”, and homa, “woman”; in the same way, frat, “descendent of the same parents, frato, brother, and frata, “sister”. This triplicity is also adopted in the “names of agents”: professor, professor, and professora, and in those of the followers of a doctrine or party: socialist, socialisto, socialista. And naturally the names of animals also benefit. The most surprising thing is to see it applied in a rather original way to the names of objects: capelo is “a man’s hat”, capela, “a woman’s hat”, while capel is the generic term. Better yet, digito is “a man’s finger”, and digita “a woman’s finger”.
With an eye toward simplification, all declensions are suppressed, and the functions of the former cases taken over, when necessary, by prepositions. The plural is always formed with s. The only somewhat illogical category is that of pronouns: here the retention of the traditional forms is aimed at easier recognition. In the chapter concerning verbs we come upon a contradiction: while the future, imperfect, pluperfect, and the future perfect have only one form (amó, amá, ami, amu, amao), with the specification of the person entrusted to the preceding personal pronoun, the present displays six different forms, that is a conjugation according to the inventor, or rather, the discoverer of the Catholic Language, (amo, ama, ame, amos, amas, ames). But even here, he anticipates criticism, and acata-a in an extremely sensible way: those who may find these endings difficult are authorized to not inflect the present, and to limit themselves to using the appropriate pronouns. The subjunctive is only distinguished from the indicative through the prefixing of the conjunctions si or qe.
As far as the imperative is concerned, as well as the other moods, and all of the syntax in general, they have not been elaborated by Dr. Liptay, awaiting the reactions of the critics. In his view, the various academies, philosophical societies, and local universities should constitute a sort of supreme academy, which, once the idea of the necessity of an international language has been accepted, would choose from among the existing projects the one which is most rational and easiest to learn. Should the Catholic Language be chosen, he “would gladly devote what remains of life to elaborating the vocabulary and completing the grammar of this language.”
In this clause one has the explanation for why the Catholic Language did not win out. In reality, its creator was becoming ever more exhausted as his lucubrations progressed. A man with a spirit entirely at ease in the digressions of the amateur philologist, he was the first to tire of the aridity of a methodical exposition. Hence the jests with which, now and then, he interrupts his more serious expositions. Thus, after explaining why he has retained the use of the article in his language, he adds: “In fact, the creation of the article has its reason for being, since it serves to specify the noun, to individualize it, to…I don’t know what all else! The reader will know better than I, and, if he does not know, then here are the both of us in the dark; but, in spite of this shameful ignorance, the existence of the article is an indisputable fact in almost all the civilized languages.”
No one more than he sensed that the book was becoming overlong, and when all of a sudden he begins his final chapter, he himself lets out a sigh of relief: “Thank God, finally!” the reader will doubtless say, nor can we blame him, since, unhappily, he is quite right!”
Dr. Liptay’s invention shows excellently well that the difficulty is not in thinking out an international language, no matter how logical and rational it may be, but rather to put it into practice. For this purpose one should not count on the enthusiasm of those who eventually adopt it. The inventor of an artificial language must elaborate down to the smallest details not only the grammar and basic vocabulary, but also the rules of derivation; and further, he needs to set the language in motion, to write entire books in the language, to test it with various translations. Half a life is not enough for the task; even two are not too much, as the example of Dr. Zamenhof shows.

2003-08-01T11:04:00.000-07:00

A blog ringing in the empty air

This has become a Zen blog

here is a blog-koan:
what is the sound of one blog blogging?

Does a blog blog if there is no one there to read it?

if you are out there, kindly say hello....

2003-08-01T11:01:00.000-07:00

Greek for Chinese to Read

By Paulo R?nai
Translated by Tom Moore

Czech or Chinese
Learn it with ease
Basque or Bantu
Can too.
-Barnet Wolf

The greatest obstacle to the comparative study of the various projects for a universal auxiliary language is the near-inaccessibility of the material. In fact, the majority of such projects are to be known through booklets with short print runs, which soon turn into bibliographical rarities, since they are almost never reprinted. Except for the case of Esperanto, public libraries are of little assistance. In addition to periodic checks of the used book stores, what has most facilitated my research has been the generous cooperation of friends, who helped out with my curiosity. Thus for example, were it not for the valued friendship of Ara?jo Ribeiro – the Brazilian who learned Swedish in order to translate Selma Lagerl?f, and to whose Benedictine dedication we will one day owe a monumental dictionary of English technical terms - , I would never have made the acquaintance of one of the most original projects, the Interglossa of Lancelot Hogben.
The name of this English biologist is not unknown in Brazil. Modernizador da divulgacao cientifica, two of his books have been translated into Portuguese (the Wonderful World of Mathematics and Man and Science). Another demonstation of his vast curiosity is his collaboration on and editing of the Loom of Language, by F. Bodmer, published here, as are the other two, by Editora Globo.
In spite of its explosively modern content, the work in which Hogben lays out his plan for an auxiliary language draws our attention with a particularly baroque title: Interglossa. A draft of an auxiliary for a democratic world order, being an attempt to apply semantic principles to language design (Harmondswort, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1943).
The work designated by such a curious circumlocution puts the attention and intelligence of the average reader to a severe test. It is not a manual intended for the general public, but rather a essay intentionally written for interlinguists, that is, specialists in the subject of auxiliary languages. It is to them that the author submits his own system; even should it not come to be adopted, he would consider himself well-recompensed for the effort if they were to accept some of his suggestions.
Inimical to all traditional grammar, Hogben is certainly one of the most radical of all the interlinguists. He begins from the proposition that an international language is primarily of interest to scientists, and especially those from the East, who need an easy means of access to the conquests of Western science. All projects prior to his, which were always based on one or more European languages, were aimed solely at Western scholars. But of course the structure of the “Aryan” languages (that is, the Indo-Germanic and the Finno-Ugric languages) is not at all natural for a Japanese, a Chinese, or an African. In order to benefit these, an international language should be of the isolating, rather than the agglutinative, type, in contrast to all the previous attempts at universal languages.
Obviously those who construct universal languages seek the maximum of economy, whether in terms of grammar or vocabulary. In the grammatical area, they let go of resources whose superfluity is made obvious by one or more natural languages.
Latin and Russian do not need an article: thus, Monsignor Schleyer, Father Monte Rosso and Prof. Magyar abandoned it in Volapük, Neo-Latinus, and Romanid respectively. Hungarian gets by very well without grammatical gender (which is also almost non-existent in English); and Ido and Interlingua renounced this frill. But from this point of view no planner went as far as Hogben, who admitted no type of inflexion, and rejected both declension and conjugation. And more: he ignores the traditional division into grammatical categories or classes of words. In Interglossa, the same word can serve not only as noun, adjective and adverb, but also as verb, preposition and conjunction. At the bottom of this there is a recollection of English, which can use practically any noun as an adjective, as long as it appears before another noun, as in the expression home affairs, midnight mass, dog days, etc., and where a word like love can take on the value of a noun, adjective or verb, depending on the context (e.g. my love; a love affair; I love you).
Thus, in Interglossa the sentence consists of the simple juxtaposition of invariable elements. What allows one to distinguish their relationships is the strict observance of an inviolable order of placement, as well as the interpolation of some “empty” words and punctuation marks, entrusted with isolating the semantic groups of the subject, the predicate, the direct object, and so forth. The initial capitals of the nouns (borrowed from German), has no other purpose.
Like Ogden, the inventor of Basic English, Lancelot Hogben also reduce the verbs to a minimum, which are no more than twenty, and are called “operators”. Thus, for example, verbs which signify feelings – such as to hate, to love, to envy – become unnecessary, since they are replaced by the operator esthe (that is, to feel) followed by the respective abstract noun: hate, love, envy (that is, by their Interglossic equivalents), which Hogben calls amplifiers. The designation noun is reserved for concrete nouns. Also part of the system are some “pseudonyms”, which correspond to our personal pronouns, but which also fulfill nominal and adjectival functions; various “articles”, that is, words which indicate number or label a nominal group; finally, some “particles” which, without modifying the order of the words, allow an interrogatory or negative to be given to the sentence, or give to the unique and invariable verb and temporal or modal value.
But let us look at a simple sentence in Interglossa: an pre acte grapho auto nomino in bibli. It is just as well that Hogben has warned us: a sentence in Interglossa can not be understood at first glance, as it generally is in other auxiliary languages. (This disadvantage would be compensated by the greater facility of expression that it provides its users.) One needs, in fact, to have learned that an (abbreviated from andro) is the “pseudonym” equivalent to “he”; that the “particle” pre indicates action in the past, and that the “verboid” acte (from actio or actus) followed by the “amplifier” grapho means “to write”, in order to puzzle out the meaning of the sentence: “He wrote his own name in the book.”
This example will suffice to let it be seen that the lexicon of Interglossa is not drawn from any living language. Hogben discovered that there is already an international lexicon, that one simply needs to gather it togther. It is present in the plethora of scientific terms that are more and more making their way into daily speech on every continent. Words like thermometer, philosophy, hierarchy, homogeneous, cartography each contain two Greek roots, and one simply needs to learn their etymology once and one will never forget their meaning. The total number of scientific words – close to a thousand – that any person with an average level of culture uses regularly constitutes the vocabulary for Interglossa, and is sufficient for the perfect construction of any proposition.
Pronounced in general like Italian, but written like French and Italian (philo, charta, thermo, rather than filo, carta, termo) in order to facilitate the recognition of the international roots, Interglossa, in the final analysis, gives one the impression of a strange Asiatic or African dialect with grafts from Greek and a little Latin.
But, since he has not had recourse – in contrast to Esperanto, Basic English, or Interlingua – to the word-stock of a modern language, Hogben escapes the danger of inheriting the ambiguities of meaning and indeterminacies inherent to living words, inseparable from idiomatic expressions, and turns of phrase shot through with illogic.
To the advantages of Interglossa should be added the fact that each word is assigned a number, which allows the transcription of any text by means of numerals.
And it lends itself extremely well to graphic representation by means of schematic figures (isotypes), as some “illustrations” in the volume in question demonstrate.
The volume announces the forthcoming publication of an English-Interglossa dictionary, as well as a manual intended for the public. I do not know if appeared, nor whether measures were taken to recommend that Interglossa be adopted internationally. At any rate, I do not believe that even much more accessible exposition would entice many adherents to the novel language, which is too far from our habits of speaking and writing. But studying it led me to realize how fortuitous and illogical are our most firmly rooted linguistic convictions, and sowed doubts as to whether the Indo-Germanic system of expression which we imbibe along with our mother’s milk is really the most appropriate for the faithful expression of thought.
Let us recognize the credit that is due to Hogben in having approached the linguistic reality with an open mind, one not influenced by historico-philological considerations. A good example of what our language would be had it been designed by scientists is the system he proposes for the verbal expression of numbers. Only ten words would suffice (similar to the ten numerals in mathematics) for the expression of any number. In accordance with mathematical practice, “two-three-four” (that is, the Interglossic equivalents) would signify 234. It would be sufficient to append the numeral to the noun in order to indicated the order of collocation (as we do with Louis XIV, Chapter Six), and put an end to ordinal numbers. Multiplicatives and names of fractions would be avoid by the adoption of algebraic practice: bi latero tri (2x3) and bi supero tri (2/3), indicating “two times three” and “two-thirds”. This is one of the many examples of economy of vocabulary offered to us by the strange, but ingenious lucubration of Lancelot Hogben.

2003-07-30T13:26:00.000-07:00

Update

...looks like the Zamenhof piece (see below) may be in the October issue of the ATA Chronicle.....

2003-07-29T09:46:00.000-07:00

PR from the forties

2003-07-29T08:15:00.000-07:00

Zamenhof

How one makes a language
By Paulo Ronai
Translated by Tom Moore

Esperanto’s greatest contribution towards solving the problem of international communications lies in its being the first artificial language that was not stillborn, like almost all of its predecessors, or deceased after a few years of life, along with the enthusiasm of its adepts, like Volapük. Today it has reached the venerable age of 116 without showing signs of exhaustion. It is the only artificial language which not only survived its creator, but actually came to be used as an auxiliary language.
To verify its practicability, I decided to read, as a test, a book written in this language. The experience was valuable: provided solely with an overview of its grammar printed on a single sheet , and a pocket dictionary , which was limited to about two thousand radicals, prefixes and suffixes, I was able, with the exception of a few words and very few sentences, to understand it.
But what I least expected was that the little book captivated me less by reason of the attractions of the language than for the topic itself. It was a biography of Zamenhof, the founder of Esperanto, by Edmond Privat . Reading it makes us understand that it was not by chance that among so many attempts at artificial languages it was precisely Esperanto that managed to succeed. Its inventor was an exceptional individual, notably endowed with intelligence and character. Perhaps there had been more brilliant minds among the precursors of the language – Leibniz, for example; none, however, had the dedication of Zamenhof, who was capable of devoting his existence to this idea.
It is really inspiring to move with him through his singular career. The idea of creating an international language intended to strengthen the bonds between men from different countries did not come to him in a flash, as happened to Mons. Schleyer with Volapük. It had been taking shape inside him since he was a child. Son of a poor Jewish teacher, Zamenhof suffered from an early age racial, national and religious hatred in Bialystok, the little city where he was born, where, under Russian rule, Poles, Lithuanians, Jews and Germans, isolated in their own languages, all detested each other. (Later he would understand that difference of language was not the principal cause for all this misunderstanding; there those who were interested in whipping up these hatreds. At any rate, the language diversity made it easier for them.) What was called for was an international language to bring together the people from all the Bialystoks of the world. He was easily convinced that, in order to be accepted by everyone, this language could not be any one of the national languages, and he resolved to create it.
No one ever clung to a dream more stubbornly. Bilingual, or rather, trilingual, since childhood (since he spoke Polish, Hebrew, and German), the young Ludwig Lazar learned Russian and French in high school, along with rudiments of Latin and Greek. He was still in high school when he began to dream of his language. Like almost all his predecessors – whose efforts and results he was unaware of - , he first wanted to make a brand-new language, made up only of invented words, all monosyllables, arranged by purely logical precepts. It would have been another of these aprioristic language, whose tombs litter the cultural landscape. But in his sixth or seventh year of secondary school he suddenly glimpsed the multiple advantages of suffixation. At the same time his studies of English revealed to him that there could be cultural languages without complex grammatical rules.
Along with his secondary studies he began patiently working out his system. Some of his classmates became his disciples, and on one day in 1878 – when Ludwig Lazar had not yet turned 19 – a strange ceremony took place at the modest house of the Zamenhofs: a half dozen adolescents joined to celebrate the birth of Esperanto. Leaning over the cradle of a grammar, singing the anthem of a non-existent people, they shared words incomprehensible to anyone else, in pure intellectual inebriation.
Ludwig Lazar’s father was frightened by the spectacle, not enthused. This sort of thing could put the future of his son at risk. He made him promise to put aside the idea until he got his diploma; then, not satisfied with the outcome, while his obedient son went to study medicine in Moscow, he secretly burned all the dangerous papers, the entire language with its roots and affixes.
Upon returning to the family house, over the holidays, the student was profoundly hurt when learned what his father had done. Now he considered that any agreement he had made was null and void. He would continue his education, but he went back to devoting all his leisure hours to the reconstruction of the work devoured in the flames. He would spend several more years experimenting with his language, which might be cause for surprise given the extreme simplicity of Esperanto. It should be noted, however, that Zamenhof’s predecessors generally put together the grammar and vocabulary of their respective languages and then turned them loose for humanity to adopt and develop; but because humanity always had other more important and more pressing business to attend to, the poor orphans withered away. Zamenhof’s process was completely different; he spent years testing the invented rules and vocabulary to see how they worked in practice. It was to this end that he began a series of translations into Esperanto of masterworks of world literature, among them the Bible, plays of Shakespeare, Molière, Goethe, Schiller, Gogol, stories by Andersen. Not until 1887, when the language had already been duly tested, did he communicate to the public, in a little book published with the material assistance of his future father-in-law.
The date of publication coincided with the second international Volapük congress. When he learned of the existence and progress of Volapük, Zamenhof had already laid out his language; otherwise he would have desisted, in spite of clearly seeing the imperfections of Schleyer’s language. The latter’s expansion, however, would soon stop dead in its tracks, and for about twenty years Esperanto could flourish without serious competition. These were twenty years of relative peace in the world, favorable to hopes of universal brotherhood, and thus, to an unprecedented effort in the propagation of a new auxiliary language.
The creator himself was surprised by the splash that his book created. Newspapers and magazines of all sorts, linguistic specialists and humble individuals showered him with praise. Many wrote to him in Esperanto. In Germany the first magazine devoted to the propagation of the newborn language was founded – La Esperantisto. Tolstoy’s support had a great effect. The writer declared that he had learned Esperanto in two hours, and added that “its study and dissemination are Christian duties, since they facilitate the advent of the kingdom of God, the principal and only objective of human life.”
Although his language was going great guns, Zamenhof found himself in a difficult situation. Far from becoming wealthy through Esperanto (he had renounced any royalties since the first edition of the book), he was losing time and money because of it, and on various occasions he had to move to a smaller office and send his wife and children to live in his father-in-laws’s house, since his income was barely enough to support himself. When finally La Esperantisto, supported by a patron, finally stopped running at a loss, and even began to help him, the Russian government in 1895 forbade its circulation in Russia, where it had its largest number of subscribers, since it had published an article by Tolstoy. But by this point the language had already put down roots in other countries, and in the same year another Esperanto periodical, Lingvo Internacia, appeared in Uppsala. From then on Esperanto would develop without interruption.
Influenced by Volapük, the leading Esperantists decided to hold their first international congress in 1905 at Boulogne-sur-Mer. Taking place in the deceptive euphoria of the beginning of the century with delegates from all over the world present, this must have been the happiest moment in the life of Zamenhof, who was applauded by all and hailed as a master. From then on he would look forward to the annual congresses. During the long, cold Polish winters he dreamed of them and impatiently prepared his annual speeches.
In spite of the enormous success of his movement, Zamenhof never lost his modesty and accepted with good sense and even humility the simplifications and improvements which were proposed by the initiates of the Esperantist idea, the samideanoj (same-idea-ers), in which respect he was completely different from Mons. Schleyer,, who, in appointing himself the pope of Volapük, became the reason for the collapse of his own creation. For this very reason he must have been deeply heart by the schism represented by ido (an Esperanto suffix meaning “descendant, child”), unleashed in 1907 by a few Esperantists, under the pretext of improvements and simplifications. Invited by a Delegation for the Adoption of an International Language, meeting in Paris, to argue for the Esperanto cause, Zamenhof had asked the Marquis de Beaufront, leader of Esperantism in France, to represent him. To everyone’s surprise, the Marquis, rather than defending Esperanto, presented in a true coup another language, ido (in reality, an improved version of it). Although ido had obtained the support of some renowned linguists, it did not manage to become a popular competitor for Esperanto; even so, Zamenhof must have suffered greatly with what seemed to him a betrayal.
Another more serious disappointment was an even bitterer pill. For him Esperanto had never been just a language: or rather, it was a language destined to say something special, something that had not been said or was not being said in the other languages. It was what he called the “intimate idea” of Esperanto, seeking to define it for the first time in 1905, in a brochure on homaranismo (humanitarianism), a movement in favor of a citizenship beyond nations and a religion beyond denominations. Not all of the samideanoj approved of the theories of the master, which the more fearful labeled as inappropriate messianism, capable of compromising the success of the language. Zamenhof agreed to make a complete separation between his ideals and the promotion of Esperanto; but he continued thinking that Esperantism without the intimate idea was something dead. He wanted to reaffirm it on the occasion of the tenth Esperanto Congress, to be held in August 1914 in Paris, but the organizers refused to include in the program an invitation to the participants to discuss homaranismo after the Congress. But the Congress was never to take place. Upon arriving at the frontier between Germany and France Zamenhof met the first trains of troops: the hostilities began like a flagrant contradiction to his dreams of universal brotherhood.
He would not long survive this terrible disappointment. He was already sick while on his way to the Congress in Paris; he returned to Warsaw from the French frontier after a harrowing journey, with the state of his health much worse. His illness made him give up his clinic little by little. He saw the horrors of the war, the new anti-Semitic persecutions, the bombing, and then the occupation of Warsaw by the Germans. Isolated in the middle of the occupied city, separated by his dear samideanoj and from his poor patients, who he had always treated without charge, the little eye-doctor’s flame slowly went out. His illness asphyxiated him, preventing him for lying down during the last months of his life. As he was dying he sat at his desk, composing an appeal to the diplomats who would sign a treaty of peace, a peace that did not arrive, and ever more disheartened, he would revise the date of the humanist congress called for in a manuscript manifesto: “December 1916”…..”after the end of the war”. But he died before peace arrived, in April 1917, bequeathing to the world a language and an example.
After the first World War Esperanto began to regain lost ground. But peace was only an illusion. Before the divisive force of the nationalism that was reborn in an even more aggressive form, the super-national language was unable to develop that spirit of reconciliation of which its founder had dreamed, even among the samideanoj. “In 1938, in a meeting of Esperantists, the Italian delegates protested the presence of Abyssinian delegates and left the room when the latter took their places.”
Even such manifestations of conformism were powerless to save Zamenhof’s language from the rage of Hitler, whose schizophrenia was directed against any entity with international tendencies. Nazism directed a real hate at it, ordered that Esperantist organizations be closed, and when its hordes invaded Poland, Zamenhof’s descendants, the objects of special persecution, were in part exterminated. Once Nazism had been destroyed, Esperanto was still the object of suspicion in Stalin’s Russia, as a “tool of bourgeois and cosmopolitan internationalism.” The “thaw” made it possible for Esperantist activities to begin again in the U.S.S.R. and the other socialist countries, and the centenary of Zamenhof’s birth (in 1959) was duly celebrated in Poland. By a strange turn of events, he managed to achieve a sort of monopoly in the German Democratic Republic, where the pamphlets of other universal languages were confiscated in the 1960’s.

2003-07-25T11:09:00.000-07:00

Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty
by Paulo Ronai
Translated by Tom Moore

The efforts put into creating an international auxiliary language for communication all begin from the assumption that the woes of humanity stem from incomprehension: if men could understand one another, they would end by understanding each other.
This thesis demands a healthy dose of optimism, and the skeptics, who are lacking in this quality, think that, even if they speak the same language, men can always find things to quarrel about. During the civil wars of ancient Rome, the wars of religion of the sixteenth century, or closer to our time, in the class struggle, the adversaries curse and exterminate each other with no need for interpreters. But nevertheless, and even if war is inherent to our wretched human condition, who could deny the advantages which would come with the adoption of an international language? They are sufficient to have induced the scholars of the last two centuries to welcome the idea and to rack their brains in trying to invent such a language.
But then – who knows? – perhaps it might not even be necessary to invent it. It would be so simple to choose an existing language and have it taught in schools around the world! But this choice would give such an advantage to the nation whose language was chosen that other nations would certainly not allow it. And thus every now and then the notion pops up that the adoption of Latin would be a neutral solution.
This idea seems particularly straightforward seeing that Latin already served for centuries, and to general satisfaction, in this capacity as universal second language. During the Middle Ages, and for considerable time thereafter, was it not the medium not only for theology, but also for all the sciences, for legislation and administration throughout Europe?
This fact, however, if it speaks in favor of Latin, also speaks against it. Its progressive disappearance, its adversaries claim, was a natural phenomenon, an organic process impossible to hold back, and motivated by the explosion in the development of the national languages. Were it not to have become enfeebled, scholars would never have seen a necessity for a new means of communication.
Norbert Wiener’s interpretation of the disappearance of Latin as an international language is one of the most convincing. For him this disappearance had nothing to do with the growth of the neo-Latin languages, since Sanskrit survived in spite of having given rise to modern languages, and literary Arabic continues to unite the Muslim world notwithstanding the split of spoken Arabic into many different dialects. Those to blame for its death are precisely those who had already revived it: the scholars of the Renaissance.
“Starting in the Renaissance, the artistic demands of the Latinists became more stringent, and the tendency to reject all post-classical neologisms ever stronger. In the hands of the great Italian scholars of the Renaissance, reformed Latin could be a work of art, and frequently was. But at the same time this exquisite and delicate tool demanded a period of training that exceeded that of the scientist, more preoccupied, in the essence of his work, with content than with perfection of form. For this reason an ever wider abyss opened between those who taught the Latin language and those who used it, until the point at which teachers came to teach the most purified but less useful Ciceronian discourse. In this void, they ended by limiting their function to that of a specialist; and as this specialty was ever less in demand, the Latinists themselves destroyed their own function. This sin of pride we are now paying for with the absence of an international language well-adapted to current needs and much superior to the artificial languages, such as Esperanto.”
Others arguing in favor of artificial languages allege that Latin, being a natural language, suffers from all the defects of these, such as illogicalities, contradictions, tautologies, and obscurities. Its grammar, which is excessively complex, demands years of study; its vocabulary has not kept up with the progress of technology, and lacks terms for the most common notions of modern life; its pronunciation differs depending on the country where it is taught; and finally, it is detested by the majority of those who learn it. In order to be adopted as an international auxiliary language, it would require such numerous and radical modifications that it would end up being transformed into another language entirely. But if that is the case, let’s simply charge our scholars with creating a new language, without the imperfections of the natural languages – which, let it be noted, are creations as well, but to be credited to illiterates and not linguists.
The partisans of modern Latin, however, are not willing to lay down their arms, in spite of this host of reasons in opposition. When it appeared that they had finally resigned themselves to the withering away of the lingua mater, they returned to the fray with new and improved justifications, anxious to promote a new Renaissance in the twentieth century.
The penultimate attempt came in 1925, when the League of Nations formed a commission to examine the problem of an international language. The Swiss writer Gonzague de Reynold, reporting for the commission, decided to reject Esperanto and proposed the adoption of a “simplified medieval Latin”, stripped of its classical syntax and of part of its inflections. But the proposal went no further, since neither the writer nor the commission took on the work of making the suggested simplifications.
Scarcely thirty years later Latin attempted to rise once more, this time under the auspices of a conclave of scientists and philologists, the First International Congress for Living Latin , called together to revivify the movement. The proceedings of the congress, which took place in 1956, are worth examining.
Naturally those participating in the meeting were not unaware of the reasons for which the aficionados of artificial languages, in particular the Esperantists, opposed the reincarnation of Latin. Precisely for that reason, part of the sessions were devoted to rebutting these, seeking to reduce their importance.
The speakers at the Congress, the preponderance of whom expressed themselves in Latin (and let it be said in passing, quite a Ciceronian Latin, with nothing medieval about it), took as a given the ineffectiveness of artificial languages. Had the devotees of Volapuk, Esperanto, Ido, Novial and Interlingua, they asked, been able to put an end to the confusion resulting from bellicose misunderstanding? Certainly not. On the contrary, they added to the confusion, with a half dozen artificial languages added to the already enormous number of natural languages.
Given this impass, there was only one possible way out: Latin. It was necessary, then, to check its capacity for renovation and to face headon the modifications that it would need to be able to return to its former universality.
Having met in Avignon, the capital of Provence, sprinkled with Roman monuments, and strolling about Vaucluse, where in former days Petrarch had reanimated the Latin muses, the scholars at the Congress were in an environment favoring enthusiasm and optimism. The conclave opened amidst high hopes. The problems began when the commissions got down to business.
The commission charged with unifying pronunciation was the one which most easily wriggled out of its difficulty: according to the report from Prof. Erich Burck, it recommended the adoption of the Roman pronunciation from the time of the birth of Christ, which would eliminate the differences found in the traditional pronunciations. It is true that the suggested pronunciation differs from those traditionally used in any of the countries where Latin is still taught, and for this reason a large part of Latin teachers still refuse to accept it. If accepted, it would deprive the regenerated language of one of its principal advantages – ease of comprehension and assimilation. Moreover, there was no way to impose it; the Congress could only recommend it to the respective ministries of education.
Another commission reviewed the methods proposed to end the jaundiced eye cast on Latin by younger generations. Prof. Goodwin Beach, an American, suggested modern practices such as listening to records, conversations in Latin, plays, excercises in editing, incentives for reading at home. Excellent ideas, indeed, but which are fundamentally flawed, since any one of these innovations requires time, and everywhere the time allotted to teachers of Latin is diminishing (and the only South American representative came to complain of the total suppression of Latin in the curricula of his country). One arrives at a vicious circle: in order to improve results one needs to expand class time, and in order to expand class time one needs to show improved results.
Perhaps the greatest interest was aroused by the work of the commission charged with simplifying Latin grammar. The commission was confronted by a dilemma: either let go of the complex system of grammar, thus sacrificing some of the principal characteristics of the language, or maintain the traditional scheme with its wealth of shades of meaning, thus renouncing the yearned-for international expansion of the language. Professor Jean Bayet finally showed himself to be a better Latinist than world citizen, since in re-examining the rules of morphology and syntax he saw so many admirable qualities that he opted to conserve them almost untouched.
“It is unthinkable to reduce of the number of cases for nouns, not to modify the tenses for the verbs” he initially declared. As far as the adjectives were concerned, he recognized the inconvenience of having various paradigms, of the exceptions, of the ambiguities of gender and case, but felt these were “compensated for by various advantages”. Later, he admitted that it was not impossible to do away with infinitival and participial clauses; “this, however, could not be done without gravely affecting the very physiognomy of the language.” He then moved on to fulsome praise of the ablative absolute, followed by a justification for relative clauses – and those in attendance, relieved, applauded the few and timid measures which he dared to suggest, one of which consisted in always writing numbers with Arabic numerals in order to avoid the snares of declension, and the other in preferring the analytical forms of the comparative and superlative to the synthetic forms.
Mindful of the criticisms which had been made of the antiquated vocabulary of the language, the Congress entrusted another commission with the task of neutralizing these. According to Prof. Guerino Pacitti, the commission suggested that neologisms be adopted very cautiously, only after the lexical resources of archaic, classical, medieval and modern Latin had been exhausted (an easier recommendation to make than to carry out); it counseled that in case of extreme necessity one might have recourse to derivation according to Latin practice; accepted, in rare cases, borrowings from classic Greek, and only very exceptionally from the modern languages, categorically advising against hybrid forms.
Interesting theses appeared in relation to the teaching of Latin as well. An eminent French Latinist showed that poor performance in this area was unavoidably tied to general ignorance of French grammar; another suggested that the Commentaries of Caesar, the vocabulary of which was so much dead weight, be excluded from secondary school curricula, and proposed their replacement by passages from Plautus and Terence.
From a strictly interlinguistic point of view, the conclusions were modest. In substance, the scholars had confronted the necessity of an intensification in the teaching of Latin, and then considered the measure to be taken to increase its diffusion and internationalization. The teachers were advised to practice the language among themselves, and the possibility of inserting abstracts in Latin in scientific journals with an international readership was put forward. Finally, they decided on the publication of a magazine, Vita Latina (Leuven: Peeters, 1957-).
Three years later, in 1959, a second congress was held in Lyons, the annals of which are already in print. The congress reiterated all the conclusions arrived at by the first congress, and advised new measures, such as the promotion of letters in Latin between students in different countries and the creation of workshops or even of specialized schools in which all the classes would be in Latin.
As can be seen, the second congress did not broaden the movement’s objectives. It did not propose Latin as a universal language for intercommunication: its efforts were limited to making it a medium of communication between scientists. There was not much emphasis on simplification of the syntax, perhaps out of fear that it would injure the essence of the language itself. In principle the broadening of the scientific vocabulary throught the adoption of neologisms was accepted, and various attenders pointed to modern Hebrew as a model to be followed in this area; but a practical method for bringing this to fruition was not arrived at. The question of pronunciation, although it had been resolved at the first congress, which had opted for “reconstituted” pronunciation, came up once more, but was not reexamined. As far as renewal of curricula in high schools was concerned, the majority was in favor of a pedagogy similar to that used for living languages, with conversation in the foreground, but there were those who continued to think that translation, carefully and methodically explained, with attention to all the historical and philosophical details of each passage, was more important. Further, some attenders believed that this problem was not entirely appropriate for the conclave, which was supposed to have been focused on how to broaden the use of Latin among adults, and especially among scientists. The percentage of presentation made in Latin was greater than that of the first congress – but those attending decided not to vote on a motion that would have proscribed the use of any other language for the third congress, which was to be organized.
To sum up, the resolutions were quite prudent. Even the most passionate admirers of Sleeping Beauty hesitated to awake her for fear that a sudden shock could be fatal.
Let us note two facts of undeniable importance for the future of Latin, occurring after the Second International Congress for Living Latin, but which presumably will have differing effects; the first, the unexpected and inexplicable success in the bookshops of a certain number of books published in Latin, among them translations of such different works as Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne, a book for children, and Bonjour Tristesse, by François Sagan, a novel for those over 18 years old (and how!), both translated by Alexandre Lenard, and the neo-Latin poetry of today, collected or written by Joseph Eberle ; the second, the restriction of the use of Latin to some parts of the mass by the Second Vatican Council at the end of 1963.
In the meantime the question raised in Babel continues to be unresolved.

2003-07-25T04:46:00.000-07:00

Birthday

Today I am forty-seven years old.

2003-07-22T06:43:00.000-07:00

De nada

Yo-Yo Ma has made another postcard CD, this time devoted to Brazilian music. It's called "Obrigado Brazil". As the resident expert on Brazil in American music library land
I got a call last year from the woman who was producing this farrago. She was looking for suggestions for classical Brazilianrep for cello, which I gave her, of course. As I recall the Assadswere supposed to be involved (doesn't look like they are...) and the arranger was from Buenos Aires....(Ouch!)

For the world's most famous classical cellist to record an album of Brazilian music without a single track that was really written for cello by a Brazilian composer of classical music is
a serious insult...and a statement about the decrepitude of the record industry in 2003.

2003-07-21T06:17:00.000-07:00

Northeast/New York

I met Tony Brower from the saudadesdobrasil list (first time) and took in the Friday night concert of the Brazil: Beyond Bossa Nova series in Manhattan, which was exhilarating. We sat in the second row for the Vanildo de Pombos set, which meant that the sound mix was not so good (couldn't really hear the vocals properly), but at least it wasn't too loud. Highlights: the guy playing zabumba, and the virtuoso bass guitarist (not a genre you expect
to find this), who was completely deadpan and playing the most amazing lines. Not a lot of variation in the tunes. I got the impression that this was a working band for working-class nordestinos. A gringo in the audience that I spoke to in the intermission thought the bass was out of place (nottraditional enough), but the band obviously didn't feel that way...
We moved back to row N for Mestre Ambrosio. They ran a great show - Helder Vasconcelos was a barrel of laughs, a live wire. Lots of great dancing.I felt like he wasn't quite up to snuff as an accordionist - needs some more woodshedding - often behind the beat. Both the accordionist in theprevious band, and the button-box man at my local Irish session have him
beat. My favorites were the tunes with just rabeca, vocals and percussion, and really dry vocals by Siba.
My impression: this band seems like college guys from the middle class (that doesn't mean they didn't give a great show), revivalists, as opposed to the previous band, which had less ironic distance from the material. In this they seem like Antonio Nobrega, also from Pernambuco. Is there some connection between the two bands?
By the end the whole audience was on its feets dancing in the aisles and
at their seats (with the exception of a critic in the next row....)

Mestre Ambrosio

The program booklet and notes sucked. More on that later.

Ben Ratliff's review of the earlier programs was in the Saturday NY Times.
I think it's bad faith for him to give the impression (which he did)
that he actually understands the lyrics at these programs....I don't
believe that he can...(somebody tell me I am wrong, if the case is
otherwise).

2003-07-14T09:20:00.000-07:00

2003-07-14T09:19:00.000-07:00

2003-07-07T05:37:00.000-07:00

More Paulo Ronai in English

I just learned that a chapter from Babel/Antibabel will be published in the August issue of the ATA Chronicle as "A Linguistic Tragicomedy".

2003-06-25T12:31:00.001-07:00

O jeito é: ou nos conformamos com a falta de algumas
coisas na nossa vida ou lutar para realizar todas as
nossas loucuras...

MÁRIO QUINTANA

2003-06-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

if god were a woman...(Mario Benedetti)

SI DIOS FUERA UNA MUJER

¿Y si Dios fuera una mujer?

Juan Gelman

¿y si dios fuera mujer?

pregunta juan sin inmutarse

vaya vaya si dios fuera mujer

es posible que agnósticos y ateos

no dijéramos no con la cabeza

y dijéramos sí con las entrañas

tal vez nos acercáramos a su divina

desnudez

para besar sus pies no de bronce

su pubis no de piedra

sus pechos no de mármol

sus labios no de yeso

si dios fuera mujer la abrazaríamos

para arrancarla de su lontananza

y no habría que jurar

hasta que la muerte nos separe

ya que sería inmortal por antonomasia

y en vez de transmitirnos sida o pánico

nos contagiaría su inmortalidad

si dios fuera mujer no se instalaría

lejana en el reino de los cielos

sino que nos aguardaría en el zaguán del

infierno

con sus brazos no cerrados

su rosa no de plástico

y su amor no de ángeles

ay dios mío dios mío

si hasta siempre y desde siempre

fueras una mujer

qué lindo escándalo sería

qué venturosa espléndida imposible

prodigiosa blasfemia

2003-06-20T08:42:00.000-07:00

Beginnings of the fight against Babel

By Paulo Rónai
Translated by Tom Moore

If it had not been for that ill-fated attempt to build a skyscraper before the permit had been approved, then perhaps humanity would have avoided endless complications. But then “the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the sons of men had built and said: Behold the people is one, and all have the same tongue; and this is what they are beginning to do; and now there will be no end to all that they will try to do. Let us go down and confound their tongue so that one shall not understand the other.”
Confusion came, in fact, and it was complete; and although today linguists call into question the primitive unity of human language, men throughout the ages have been nostalgic for the time in which “all the earth spoke the same language and the same tongue”.
Indeed, the amount of work that the multiplicity of languages has caused us is frightening. How much time and effort spent simply to know what it is that our neighbor wants to say to us! (And the worst of it is that he sometimes just wants to challenge or annoy us).
It has already been said that if the Romans had had to study Latin declensions, they would never have found time to found the Empire. Who knows how many useful things have not been done throughout the world because of the necessity of learning languages?
Philologists abandoned long ago as a hopeless quest the attempt to reconstruct the primitive lingua mater, noting that all languages, even the most ancient, had already come down to us in a highly developed state, in which little or nothing can be seen of a common ancestor, if there was one.
To neutralize the pernicious effects of Babel, all that could be done was to create a new means to bring together the peoples with their different languages. The idea arose when Latin, a “dead language” which for a thousand years had done what no living language would later manage to do – to be the international language of all the intellectuals in Europe -, began to lose ground in its battle with the vulgar tongues, at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The impressive history of the efforts devoted to the construction of a universal auxiliary language constitutes one of the most curious adventures of the human spirit in its struggle to liberate itself from the irrational, and to organize in a sensible way the world of ideas and their expression. An antipoetic effort, at its core, but one which, through the audacity of the undertaking, becomes a true poem, in which the heroic and the burlesque appear together more than once, and whose chapters it is worth recording.
Now, you will say, rather than constructing an auxiliary language, wouldn’t it be simpler to adopt one of the languages which already exist? “No”, answer the partisans of a universal language, “since the other peoples would envy and fear the favord nation”, ‘since it is quite understandable that the people whose language was chosen as international would in a short time achieve such supremacy over all the other peoples that it would oppress them and swallow them up.’ What is more, contemporary history, which we have had the unhappiness of experiencing in the first person, is producing the opposite phenomenon: the political power of a nation results in the adoption of its language as an auxiliary language by all the less powerful peoples in its orbit. Hence the ever-increasing loss of prestige of French in international relations in favor of English (or American, rather), and of Russian in the East. If the course of events should provoke a conflict, the result would fatally settle the question of the auxiliary language: the winner would not even need to impose its language, since all the peoples would hasten to adopt it in their own best interest.
Faith in the advent of an artificial auxiliary language presupposes confidence in the possibility of peaceful international solutions. It is true that the apostolate of the artificial solution began in an epoch in which world wars were not foreseen, and only beneficial results were expected from technological progress. Hence the refusal, certainly quite understandable, to adopt the language of any nation, unless it were to be, as someone already proposed, that of a small people, completely devoid of imperial notions, like the Norwegians, and which, on top of it, had an easy syntax.
Why not resuscitate, then, one of the dead languages, preferably Latin, which as we have already said, carried out the ardous task of transmitting international though to the satisfaction of all over a millennium?
Because, say the experts, Latin would need to be painstakingly adapted and broadened in order to serve the thousand new demands of modern life. To redo it without simplifying its intricate grammar would be folly; but on the other hand, to reduce it a simple kitchen Latin would be a sacrilege, a utilitarian degradation no less odious than “transforming the Parthenon into an airport”. We will see however, that the ghost of this poorly-buried cadavaer will return to haunt us.
Having thus eliminated the living and the dead languages, the only remaining possibility are those not yet born and waiting to be created, that is, artificial languages, which are more numerous than you might think: some stillborn, others ephemeral, a few deceased after a promising youth, and only one, Esperanto, which has arrived at the ripe old age of ???. Few of the others left their dreamlike state to join, for a time, our imperfect natural languages.
Before turning to the artificial languages, however, let us not the rather curious idea of making do without a new language, or even without languages in general, without however giving up the notion of being universally understood. The idea is not as bizarre as it seems at first, since languages do not constitute the only means which humanity has for expressing itself. All the city-dwellers in the world understand the language of red, green and yellow lights, just as motorists of every nationality slow down (or should slow down, at least) when they see triangular signs indicating curves. Thanks to the Dewey Decimal Classification, for every librarian the number 884 indicates “Greek lyric poetry” and 546 “inorganic chemistry”. And all ship captains use the code of maritime signals.
(We are simply listing those systems which have been universally adopted; but if we wished to not those more restricted in their use, we could fill reams of paper, remembering, of course, the two Marseillais in the story, who traveling by train, amused themselves by sharing numbers with each other, each greeted with gales of laughter. The foreigner who was viewing this strange scene asked them for an explanation, whereupon he learned that Marius and César knew a large number of amusing stories from Marseilles; all they needed was to hear the number for each one to break out laughing.)
These three stystems are relatively new, dating respectively from 1931, 1895, and 1864.Many years earlier, in 1797, Major Maimieux of the Prussian infantry invented a Pasigraphy or New Science and Art of Writing and Printing in a Language that can be Understood without the Necessity of Translation , “a sort of universal language, which is written, but not spoken, i.e. the art of writing in the language which one knows, so that it can be read and understood in any other unknown language, as long as the reader knows his own language and knows this way of writing.” The major invented a certain number of different characters, admitting that each principal idea could be symbolized by a radical composed of certain number of letters, so that accessory ideas would be represented by signs placed outside the body of the radical, like exponents in mathematics. It was “simply” necessary to put together a complete and systematic nomenclature for all possible ideas. The plan, welcomed with great enthusiasm by many illustrious savants of the peiord, who promised their collaboration, never went further than several sample pages.
Even without having fleshed out his first invention, Major Maimieux announced another, pasilalia (the “art of saying everything”), with which, in making pronouncable the signs from his pasigraphy, he already appears as one of the many creators of universal languages. We will see how the logical classification of ideas constitutes the basis of an important group of planned languages.
In compensation, there was also an attempt at a complete classification of signs, whether letters or not, which could be written or carved into flat surfaces. Walter Shepherd’s Glossary of Graphic Signs and Symbols allows anyone to identify in a few seconds each of the three thousand signs listed.
It seems that the author of pasigraphy, just as, before him, those of the first attempts at a universal written language, and after him, his imitators – Hourwitz, inventor of polygraphy or “the art of corresponding by means of a dictionary of all the languages, even those for which not even the alphabets are known” , and Father Matraya, creator of genigraphy, based on the Peruvian quipos , was inspired by a very ancient system of communication and one which had demonstrated its practicality through many centuries of use: the syllabic-ideographic writing of the Chinese literary language, in which each sign correponds to a syllable and an idea. This writing “is the means by which the Chinese, who speak completely different and mutually incomprehensible dialects, have the sense of belonging to the same people. Thanks to the existence of a written language, independent of spoken tongues, it is understood by all the Chinese, except for those few who are illiterate; in the same way, the other peoples of East Asia which adopted Chinese writing, the Koreans, Japanese, and Vietnamese, can make themselves understood with the Chinese without knowledge of the spoken language.”
Thus these “barbarous” Chinese, which European missionaries were going to “civilize”, possessed perfectly practical and widely-used international written language, which when reported by these same missionaries, amazed the greatest European minds, including that of Leibniz, who was quite preoccupied in neutralizing the ill effects of Babel.
It would not be surprising, then, if – given the present expansionist tendencies of Chinese politics – the philologists of Beijing were not working right now on a simplification of Chinese in order to make it tomorrow’s international cultural medium.

2003-06-17T10:26:00.000-07:00

Pagans

Last night I drove up Rt. 1 to Barnes and Noble (the only spot with any life on a monday night, and the closest bookstore to Trenton - pitiful that the State Capital has no bookstore), and picked up two volumes. Right now I am reading Pagan Holiday - On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists (orig. title Route 66 A.D.) by Tony Perrottet. He is an excellent travel companion - witty and informed, and his apercus about Rome and Naples jibe with what I remember from my trip there in 1984 (he even has a three-months pregnant wife with him on the journey, as did I). The other book is the most recent novel by Connie Willis, a science-fiction whose earlier work I enjoyed a great deal...I am rather out of the habit of reading science-fiction...something that seems like it belonged to a different person.

Tony Perrottet

2003-06-16T00:42:00.000-07:00

Jean Louis Steurman

2003-06-16T00:39:00.000-07:00

J. S. BACH Golberg Variations, BWV 988. Jean Louis Steuerman (pn). ACTES SUD AT 34112 (73:29)

Black background, focus on a few piano keys, white and mustard lettering: the cover is simple, tasteful, sober and discreet. Much the same can be said about the performance. The very first musical phrase reveals qualities that shine through the whole CD: a tender serenity, a noble touch, a controlled flexibility. Being a rather radical partisan of period instruments, my first choice of keyboard for Bach would never be the piano. And yet I have to confess that this recording kept my attention up to the very last note, and made me wish for more.
The Goldberg Variations is considered one of Bach’s “difficult” works. Partly due to its length, it is very rarely played in public and remains an intimate piece, a musician’s delight, the kind of music one plays for oneself. Perhaps exactly because of that, it exerts a special fascination for keyboard players, as a technical challenge to be overcome, but much more as an experience that will deepen their emotional grasp. Steuerman himself, in the CD’s liner notes, declares “I had a sense that this music would change the world for me, with the promise of an exhilarating experience if only I could learn its complex score”.
And learn it he did. His playing demonstrates a long-cherished intimacy with every single turn of phrase. The melancholic theme is enunciated straightforwardly, trills calmly performed, not as a nervous ornamental frill, but rather as a means to caress a specific note. This very direct yet gentle style creates a marvelous effect, a feeling of tranquil acceptance, of being aware of the inevitability of sorrow. After that, each Variation stands out for its particular character, unfailingly perceived and masterfully brought to life.
There is a fabulous array of emotional shades here: unwavering energy, pleading cries, unrestrained joy, light insouciance, courageous despair. As in a kaleidoscope, these different colored fragments are re-combined with every new movement. When at last the theme reappears, it sounds almost exhausted after so many adventures, sadly distraught and quiet. And yet, behind the slower tempo and quieter dynamics, one senses a tinge of triumphant pride. Steuerman manages to guide us through this maze of musical intentions without ever sounding limp or rushed - reflective moods are pensive but never dead, and fast passages sound like fluid cascades of notes, lines always clear, perpetually disentangling themselves, never blurring the main idea.
If at first I might have wished for a more extravagant conception, one with broader gestures or a freer rhythmic drive, ultimately I was entirely convinced by this very elegant and accomplished performance. Finally, it would be unfair not to praise the exceedingly careful production, apparent not only in the beautifully designed booklet with poetic texts, but also in the very fine sound engineering that registers the subtlest changes in dynamic and timbre. This is a CD that I will enjoy for many years to come.

2003-06-13T13:16:00.000-07:00

A Linguistic Tragicomedy

By Paulo Ronai
Translated by Tom Moore

For the Brazilian who has not yet traveled outside his country it will be difficult to understand the obsessive energy with which the idea of an international language haunts and torments a European brain. One trip through Europe would suffice to make him develop a passionate interest in the matter. And if by chance he is lacking in means for such a trip, he can content himself in opening with us an ingenious little book intended for those lucky ones with no impediments to their undertaking such an attractive and instructive expedition.
Throughout the ages there have been little conversational guides for travelers to use. But no matter how compact they might be, the tourist wishing to criss-cross the Old World in all directions would never have enough pockets (even including those in his vest and overcoat) to carry with him the guides he would need.
Mr. Archibald Lyall, a linguist endowed with good sense, had the brilliant idea of bringing together an enormous number of these little books in a single volume of only three hundred pages. To accomplish this feat he reduced each language to its quintessence: thirty sentences and eight hundred words. He certainly does not mean to insinuate that this is sufficient for the exchange of ideas with the natives of various countries; but it will enable the traveler to ask for and receive information, to know how much something costs, to buy a sandwich or a few liters of gasoline. With a malicious wink the author observes that the majority of people do not make use of a larger number of words and phrases even when at home in their own country.
It is clear that the sentences and vocabulary chosen by Mr. Lyall were chosen with great care and correspond to the real necessities of the tourist in the street, the hotel, the restaurant, the taxi, the post office. He must have made use of competent collaborators for each language, since – at least those of which we have knowledge – there are almost no errors.And what is more, he offers a short synopsis of each one of the languages included, in which he quite laconically sums up their fundamental characteristics.
One who, like us, pages through this useful little book not as a tourist but rather in an (unhappily) disinterested manner, simply to dream a little, will certainly find food for thought, and will come away from his reading with the general impression of an insoluble linguistic drama.
“What Europe most needs” said a sagacious and bilious observer “are about fifty more dead languages”. And we might almost agree with him in seeing that Mr. Lyall considers it indispensable to supply our traveler with keys for no less than twenty-five languages. You may say that he has included Esperanto, and since it is spoken on the shores of the Mediterranean, Arabic; but on the other hand, he paid no attention whatsoever to Catalan, Provençal, Basque, Gaelic, Ladino, Yiddish, Ukrainian, Slovak, Slovene et quibusdam aliis, not to mention dialects! And they are, by and large, old languages, with strong cultural traditions, that is, resistant to any attempts at simplification or unification.
Another not very heartening conclusion: it is in the immediate necessities of expression in a language that the knowledge of others is less helpful, even if they are closely related. To make a request, French, Italian, Romanian, and Portuguese, in spite of being related, make use of quite different formulas (donnez-moi, s’il vous plaît; mi dia, per piacere; te rog adumi; faça o favor de me dar), and if their requests are fulfilled, they will express thanks with totally distinct formulas (merci, grazie, va multumesc, obrigado). How can it be, that four daughters of the Germanic branch – English, German, Dutch, and Swedish can call matches by four names that have nothing to do with each other (matches, Streichhoelzer, lucifers, tandstickor) and can have four disparate ways of walking (to walk, spazieren, wandelen, promenera)?
The aspiring polyglot will also note with surprise and a certain disappointment how small the number of truly international words is in the daily lexicon. Among the eight hundred words in the book there are not even a half dozen used in each one of the twenty-five languages listed. Kilometer and museum are – not taking into account the differences in spelling- kilometer and museum everywhere. But Turkish continues to call the restaurant a lokante; Hungarian still uses t?virat instead of telegram; Finnish is obstinate in talking on the puhelin, not the telephone; German, just to be that way; listens to the Rundfunk, and not the radio; and we Brazilians insist on calling correio what is the post everywhere else. But where this variety approaches the level of absurdity is in the terms used for that particular spot where every tourist must go periodically, and which, as we come and go, could certainly be indicated with the same euphemism in every tongue.
As far as foreign terms are concerned, certain languages – Russian, in particular – show great liberality in welcoming them in, where as others, such as German, and Hungarian and Finnish even more so, refuse to accept them, or when they seem themselves forced to do so, drown them in the national lexicon to such an extent that they become unrecognizable.
Mr Lyall’s lists also allowed me to discover that there are not only ultranational and xenophobic languages; there are jealous and vindictive ones as well. This is the case for modern Greek, which seems to bear a grudge against Latin for having supplanted it two thousand years ago in international communications, and thus obstinately opposes neologisms from Latin roots. Though every other country has adopted such nouns as republic, bus, passport, visa, in the land of Homer these have not managed to overthrow dhimocrat?a, leophore?on, dhiavat?rion and epithe?risis; and - unless Mr. Lyall is pulling our leg – a self-respecting greek does not say consulate, but rather proxeneion!
What tempers somewhat the effect of such disheartening information is the unintended humor of other information. In order to better serve the tourist, the scrupulous author felt obliged to transcribe the pronunciation of the sentences in other languages into the English alphabet!
Reading such a book will make us palpably understand how fortunate is the linguistic unity of our immense Brazil. Just imagine if our maç? (apple) could be called pomme in S?o Paulo, mela in Vitoria, manzana in Belo Horizonte, marul in Brasilia, apple in Curitiba, aeblet in Florian?polis, i?bloko in Recife, alma in Manaus, obylis in Belém, m?lon in Salvador and so forth; and you will give thanks to Providence that you do not need to take Mr. Lyall’s little book with you when you take the ferry to Niteroi.

2003-06-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

the more things change the more they stay the same

While looking at a footnote from Paulo Ronai's Babel/Antibabel, I found that the author of the work cited (Debabelization by C.K. Ogden) also wrote the following (London: Allen & Unwin, 1915)

Militarism versus feminism, an enquiry and a policy demonstrating that militarism involves the subjection of women.

2003-06-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

Gosto do meu corpo quando está com teu
Corpo. Tá tão muito nova coisa.
Musculos melhor e nervos mais.
Gosto do teu corpo. Gosto da que faz,
Gosto dos comos dele. Gosto sentir a espinha
Do teu corpo e dos ossos, e a firmalisura que
Treme e que beijarei
Mais e mais e mais;
Gosto beijar esse e aquele de você,
Gosto, cariciar devagarzinho o fuzz elêtrico teu,
E o-que-é vem
Sobre a carne que abre…e olhos grandes migalhas-amores

E pode ser que gosto da sensação de
Baixo de mim você tão muito nova

2003-06-12T14:46:00.000-07:00

Orlando

We can know few, if any, of the composers of the sixteenth century as well as Orlando di Lasso (1532?-1594). Orlando di Lasso has been widely admired as a composer by twentieth and twenty-first musicians since the publication of his (in-)complete works in the later nineteenth century, one of the first Renaissance composers to be so honored. The edition by Haberl and Sandberger began in 1894 (Haberl had begun the edition of the totemic Palestrina in 1863), so that by the early years of the twentieth century a substantial part, if not all, of his extensive body of work could be studied and performed by musicians. What is unique for Lasso, however, is the volume and character of the surviving letters from his pen, a total of fifty-seven such in the modern edition, dating from 1573 to 1591, which give us a remarkable insight into his personality and his relationship with his master, the Duke of Bavaria, Wilhelm.
Lasso was already internationally renowned by the time he was in his early thirties, and his earliest biography, by Samuel van Quickelberg, appeared in the Prosopographia heroum atque illustrium virorum totius Germaniae (Depiction of the heroes and illustrious men of all Germany) published in Basel in 1566. It was translated into German in the Teutscher Nation Heldenbuch (Hero-book of the German Nation, also Basel, 1578). According to Burton’s Silva Rhetorica (rhetoric.byu.edu) a prosopographia (from prosopon, face or person) is a “vivid description of someone's face or character”, and both the Prosopographia and the Heldenbuch include both portraits and text about their subjects. Lasso must certainly have been one of the most vivid characters. His companions seem to be parish priests, abbots, etc., robed, hooded, with faces turned discreetly away from the viewer. Lasso, in contrast, is dressed in the latest style, his tailored clothes close-fitting, with a ruff, what seems to be a gold chain or two around his neck, bearing a cameo, his eyes wide-open, looking as if he is about to speak. Although he is only in his thirties, his hairline has receded considerably (the charitable artist has given him a little more hair than he has in the portait – age 28 – in a tenor part-book of the Songs of the Sibylls.)
According to Quickelberg’s biography (many of the other biographies in the volume are not signed), Orlando di Lasso was born in 1530 in Berga (Mons, in the region of Hainaut, in present-day Belgium), went to a boarding school where he lived with other choirboys, and pleased particularly because of his fine voice, was stolen away from the school three times by potential employers, and twice brought back to the school by his “diligent and honest” parents. The life of a choirboy could be a dangerous one, since then as now, they might be molested or abused by the musicians and clerics who had them in their charge. Recent scholarship has exonerated the English composer John Shepherd, and hung the misdeeds previously blackening his name on a Richard Shepper – keeping a schoolboy in chains (punishment for the adult – no dining privileges for a week). And closer to home, Nicolas Gombert, from La Gorgue in southern Flanders, Master of the Children for the traveling chapel of Emperor Charles V, was sent to the galleys for violating a boy in the Emperor’s service.
In fact the third time that Lasso left the choir school, in the early 1540’s, it was with Ferrante Gonzaga, who knew Gombert from their mutual service to the Emperor, both having served him from a young age (a letter sent by Gombert to Gonzaga in 1547, after the former’s term in the galleys is in the Pierpont Morgan Libray in New York). Gonzaga was a younger son in the ducal family from Mantua, an able general, and served as viceroy in Sicily from 1533-1546, moving to Milan as governor in 1546. It would have been about this time that Lasso’s voice changed (after six years in Gonzaga’s service, when he would have been about sixteen – late by contemporary standards, but normal for earlier centuries). At eighteen he went to Naples and stayed for three years with the Marquis della Terza. Next he moved on to Rome, where he took over the music at St. John Lateran.
His parents fell ill, and Lasso left Rome to visit them. They were dead before he arrived in Belgium, and Quickelberg says that Lasso went to first to England, then to France with the Neapolitan bass Giulio Cesare Brancaccio, later to be well-known as part of the glittering ensemble of madrigalists at the Este court in Ferrara. This would have been in 1554 or 1555, during the brief reign of Mary I, when the Catholic religion was briefly restored, and elaborate religious music was back in vogue (e.g. the seven-voice mass for Christmas “Puer natus est nobis” by Tallis, probably written in hopes of a royal heir from the marriage of Mary and Philip of Spain). Perhaps the young pair of musicians had scented professional opportunities.in the air. Then they went to Antwerp, where in 1555 Lasso published a collection showing off his professional skills – madrigals, villanescas, chansons, and motets. If this collection was to serve as a portfolio for prospective employers, it seems to have worked, for he was hired to join the musical establishment at the court of Duke Albrecht of Bavaria in Munich the next year in 1556. According to Quickelberg, Albrecht was a particular lover of music, and Lasso made himself beloved of the Duke not only because of his suavissimas compositiones, but most particularly because of his iucundissimos mores, apophtegmatum et iocorum ubertatem, and linguarum peritiam – his merry manner, his cornucopia of witticisms and jokes, and his skill in languages. These are exactly the qualities that are especially evident in Lasso’s letters to Duke Wilhelm in the early 1570s.
Albrecht’s son, Wilhelm, was born in 1548, thus considerably younger than Lasso (eight years old to Lasso’s mid-twenties in 1556). By his teens he went to study at the University of Ingolstadt, and his festive wedding with Renée of Lorraine took place in 1568. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Wilhelm “made a reputation by his strong religious opinions and devotion to the Faith, and was called "the Pious". He may have been a fervent adherent of the Counter-Reformation, but the portrait we see in Lasso’s letters is a rather more earthy one. There is a marvelous portrait of Lasso from 1570 in the Mielichkodex held in the Staatsbibliothek in Munich, where the composer is garbed in black, looking serious, with almost a sneer on his face. This is the “public” Lasso. The private Lasso is another matter entirely, full of humor, puns, jests, scatological, earthy. One can only imagine the private glee that the Duke and he must have shared in hearing mass with an ordinary by Lasso based on filthy French chansons - the most outrageous example being the Missa “Entre Vous Filles” on a song by Clemens Non Papa.

Entre vous filles de quinze ans,
Ne venez plus à la fontaine,
Car trop aves les yeulx frians
Tetin poingnant bouche riant connin mouflant
Le cueur plus gay qu'une mistaine
Entre vous filles de quinze ans,
Ne venez plus à la fontaine!

You girls, fifteen years old,
Don’t come to get water at the fountain,
Because you have darling eyes,
Pert breasts, laughing mouths, warm little cunny
Hearts gayer than a dream
You girls, fifteen years old,
Don’t come to get water at the fountain!

Any listener who knew the original song would have recognized the music instantly, even though the choir might have been singing “Kyrie”, and recalled the original text. It would likely have been widely known, since the first publication was in 1541, four decades before Lasso’s mass appeared in 1581 (in a volume including a mass based on the more respectable love song Il me suffit by Sermisy (from 1528), and one based on Lasso’s own motet setting a passage from the erotic Song of Songs.
The passages from the letters from Orlando to Wilhelm which are translated below will give a sense of the merry moods, the almost manic wit, the breadth of skill in languages (French, Italian, Latin, German, even Spanish), the punning, and most of all the easy friendship between the poltron and patron
- the court jester and his master. We are not used to thinking of eminent composers as fools (in the best sense of the word), and particularly not composers of the Renaissance, the zenith of the development of sacred music. Who could imagine Palestrina thus, or Byrd? But for Lasso, earth and sky are part of a single garment without seam. In that sense he is perhaps the most “catholic” of composers, encompassing almost all the genres of his time.

[July 1572, to Duke Wilhelm of Bavaria]

….Quant au rest nos sommes arives a erding, … puis partis sommes de gran matin: sans avoir beu nè eau ne vin, la pluie nous a fait compagnie, Jusque a minichen la Jolie, ce soir icj en mon Jardin, nous disputerons sans latin et seron Joieux par mon ame, en beuuant pour mon maistre guillaume, was weiter wirt werden. E.f.G. sera remboursé de monsieur vostre aumonier del totum in totis per totas De ore prudentis procedit mel: ego certissime plus scriberem, sed pour autant quil est quasi temps de aller as vesperas, et non possum intromittere de faire une petite visitation, au pays bas de ma femme, pour l’honneur de monsieur de fon cotu, car trop y? que naj foutu, c’est une chose naturelle: car elle sent bien les grouselle, je men voj droit monter sur elle….

As far as the rest is concerned, we have arrived at Erding….for we left first thing in the morning, without having drunk nor water nor wine, the rain kept us company all the way to Munich the fair, this evening in my garden we will argue without Latin, and be merry, by my soul, as we drink to my master Guillaume. Your Grace will be reimbursed by your almoner for the whole in all things for all things. Honey proceedeth from the mouth of the prudent. I would most certainly write more, excepting that it is almost time to go to vespers, and I cannot shirk from making a little visitation to the low-lands of my wife, to honor Monsieur Cucked Funt, for it is already too long since I fucked. It’s something natural, she loves to feel my balls banging, I am going to climb on her right away….

[19 August 1572, to Duke Wilhelm of Bavaria]

Tréhaut Trepuisssant Jouissant: monsieur mon maistre a jamais

….Je prie le Createur qu’il meine et rameine vostre Excellence en baviere sain et dispos en tous propos, et quil aporte a madame, un petit filz dedans sa lame, je le desire sur mon ame….

Ma femme mon petit rudolfe e monsieur mon personnage basions en toutte humile les mains de vostre Excellence et de madame la princesse: encore qu’elle n’ait mal au fesse, Dieu nous conserve en liesse…
De votre Excellence tréshumble serviteur Orlando di La-Sol

Most High, Most Puissant, Most Randy: my lord for aye
…I ask my Creator that he keep and preserve your Excellence in Bavaria, and that he bring milady a little child in her mud, I heartily wish it…

My wife, my little Rudolf, and Mr. My very own self all humbly kiss the hands of your Excellence and milady the Princess: and hope that her fanny is well, God save us…
From the most humble servant of your Excellence, Orlando di La-Sol

Most High, Most Puissant – not surprising forms of address for a duke. But jouissant? Jouisser means to enjoy in a general sense, but nowadays (and presumably when Lasso was writing) it also means specifically to enjoy sex – to have an orgasm. But then since Lasso goes on to wish the Duke that the Creator see fit to grant his lady a little child her in her “netherlands”, and hopes that the princess is not unwell there, perhaps not surprising.

[7 October 1572]

Monsieur mon prince, mon duc, mon seigneur, mon maistre, va del resto, salus et gaudio…

….Ma potta del gran turco, é possibil ch’el mio patron, possa star senza il suo poltron, parlo de me et de moj, no lo credete fate voj, se ti puo star senza mi, mi no vo star senza tj, Je parle come un couillon, mais cest la conclusion, jour et nuit pour vous prion, en bonne devotion, tourné maistre a la maison, garde bien la clef du con, car sans elle rien de bon: ici fais fin a ma leçon….

Monsieur my prince, my duke, my lord, my master, and all the rest, health and joy…

But by the Grand Turk’s cunt, is it possible that my patron can be without his fool, I’m talking about me, myself and I, I can’t believe it, if you can be without me, I don’t want to be without you, I’m talking like a jerk, that’s all, day and night we pray for you, devotedly, come back home, master, look after your cunt-key, because without it there’s no fun: this is the end of my lesson….

[1572, to duke Wilhelm in Dachau]

….Si madame sa femme bien se porte / Je ne m’en plains ni déconforte / S’elle a a la pance bien enflee / C’est signe que l’aves bien pressee / S’elle sent son enfant remuer / Cela vient du cul remuer / C’est la sentence de Janobbo / En disant Bon di meser gobbo…

If madame your wife is well, I am not complaining; if her belly is swollen, it shows that you banged her well; if she feels the baby moving, that comes from waggling her butt; That’s what Janobbo has to say, in wishing you a good day….

[11 September 1573, to Duke Wilhelm]

…Enquant a la musique que votre Excellence m’escrit quelle va petit a petit, cela va fort bien Signor si, perche si dice in italiano, pian piano, si va luntano, …..

As far as the music goes, about which your Excellence wrote me, it’s coming along little by little, quite well, Signor, because as we say in Italian, slowly, slowly, and you’ll go far.

Wilhelm was asking about the lavish edition of motets entitled Patrocinium Musices, with his picture on the cover, published in Venice…..?

[16 February 1574, to Duke Wilhelm]

….io lasso saber a vuestra Excellentia si come per la gratias de dios todos las compagnias tanbien los cavallos é la mercedes de los asinos se portent mediocrement asses fort bien, et equitamus apud locum vocatis clausa, sed pian pianino, jusques an dem herbergum, ubi alle nacht ich lass ein guetten drunck umbergen pro sanitate pincipem nostrum galantissium…..

[20 February 1574, to Duke Wilhelm]
…qua in Trento se dice publicamente ch’el signor duca di ferrara inferrar? la principessa maximiliana, idio il voglia…

here in Trent it is said publicly that the Signor Duke of Ferrara will chain down (inferrare) the princess Maximiliana, God willing….

Another bad pun….

[7 April, 1575]

…...suplicando a v.E. a humiliarsi ad legendum illam se ben non é, santa scrittura, nu musica in tablatatura, ognun cerca la sua ventura….non ho hauuto pacientia, di non haver fatto motto al mio benignissimo e dolcissimo patrone, ancor chio no sia ch’un poltrone, tuttj non potemo esser gran signorj ne bisogna de mediocrj et de I minorj, io mi contento di mia sorte laudar vo dio sino a la morte…

begging your Excellency to read this, even if it is not Holy Scripture, or music in tablature, every man seeks his own fortune…I had not the patience to not ???to my most benign and sweetest patron, even if I am no more than a fool, we can’t all be great lords, we need some mediocre folk and worse, I am happy with my station and will praise the Lord until I die…

[20 june 1575]

monsieur: signor, meser, si, a la fe: patron, de mi poltron

per cento é quaranta, che tutta notte canta, volte, …..Excellentia, con la mia sapientia, pien di scientia, d’esperientia con vehementia, venga il cancaro a la pestilentia, volendo io cominciar a scriver con prudentia, mi soprariva una cadentia…

Monsieur, Singnor, Master, by my faith: my patron, from me, fool

….Excellence, with my knowledge, full of science, experience, with vehemence, come plague and pestilence, wishing to begin with prudence, I am missing a cadence???

And finally, to give a sense of Lasso with his public face on…

[25 June 1585, to Prince August, Duke of Saxony]

….since the bearer of this letter, Leonardus Lechnerus Athesinus, a well-known good composer and musician, is without employment at present, and I understand that your highness’s music is without a Kapell-Meister at present, thus I have most submissively and with the best intention sent the above-named to you….I have no doubt that your Grace will find that the bearer well-practiced in every thing pertaining to a Kapell-Meister….so that your Grace will not only be most pleased with him, but could not wish to have him better….

As can be seen from the above, Lasso was fluent in most, if not all, of the languages of Western Europe, and it is also evident that although Lasso was working in Germany at a German court, he rarely writes to his master the Duke in German. Lasso was a European who continued to create in pan-European genres after moving to Munich. These were essentially the chanson, the madrigal, and music for the church.
Lasso’s style in the chanson is essentially conservative, harkening more to the styles and taste of the 1530s and 1540s, rather than reflecting the innovations of the French composers of that latter part of the century such as Le Jeune and Bertrand, where the chanson is moving towards a more elevated and artistically ambitious form influenced by the seriousness of the madrigal. Lasso’s choice of text in the chanson also reflects the bawdy tastes of an earlier day (for example, the nun of the order of Ave Maria who fell in love with a Pater…you know how the story ends), with Clement Marot (who died when Lasso was an adolescent) the most popular poet.
Lasso’s madrigals are also essentially conservative both in style and in choice of poet, Petrarch being far and away the most present in his works. Although Lasso was most capable of manipulating chromatic harmonies to great effect (witness his Prophetiae Sibyllarum) the madrigals are essentially contrapuntal, diatonic, and not soloistic in the way that works written with the style of Ferrara in mind came to be. There are chromatic harmonies present, but they are used as special effects (for example where the composer moves from B-flat to E major in the space of a measure on the text doglios’e misera in the Petrarch sestina Si com’al chiaro giorno).
Although Lasso wrote dozens of chansons and madrigals (and even two books of German lieder, which are not among his best works), it is perhaps in his sacred music where his sheer fecundity is most daunting, with almost seventy masses, dozens of magnificats, hundreds of motets. One of my own favorites among the masses, as fine as anything by Byrd, and finer than anything by Palestrina, is the Missa Sesquialtera, never published (it survives in a single manuscript at the Austrian National Library, dated 1579), and apparently written for a wedding. The level of rhythmic play, and at the same sensitivity to the declamation of the text, is simply astounding – Lasso must have written this piece for a real connoisseur to enjoy (the title comes from the word for the proportion three in the time of two). No adventurous group has yet recorded this masterpiece alas.