Encomium of Arlen Specter, Mark C. Taylor, David Plotz, and Helen

Arlen Specter, Mark C. Taylor, and David Plotz have abandoned their own and have, according to their own kind, run off with the enemy. (Yesterday, we read how Specter dumped his political party for the other; how Taylor systematically trashed his American University system for a proposal sounding as foreign as the film Gung-Ho, and how Plotz rejected reading The Good Book as his fellow Jews would [i.e., "Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, or none of these, every Jew who is not totally alienated from his people"] for the practice of reading "the Hebrew Bible as you'd peruse the newspaper.")

They sound like Helen, don't they? I mean Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore of whom Bettany Hughes writes and remembers so beautifully. Remember, Helen abandoned the Hellenes and ran off with Alexander and the other non-Greek Trojan men.

How could Helen be praised? How could she be defended for her defection? And how now Spector, Taylor, and Plotz?

Hughes gets us thinking about the "how"s of rhetoric:

When, in Ancient Greece, the rhetorician Gorgias stood up and delivered his 'Encomium of Helen' (a defence of Helen of Troy's indefensible character) - this was a great joke. How can you laud the most sluttish femme fatale of all time? But the rhetoric also got people thinking - maybe, just maybe the skilled speaker had a point.

Can we listen, and think? Why, oh why, why, why why would Helen (the most beautiful woman in the world) abandon the men, the Hellene men, who had her first?

Here's a little of the answer: the joke, the reasoned rhetoric, the poetry (the confessed word-play of Gorgias), and a good part of it even rhymes:

ἢ γὰρ τύχης βουλήμασι
καὶ θεῶν βουλεύμασι
καὶ ἀνάγκης ψηφίσμασιν
ἔπραξεν ἃ ἔπραξεν,

ἢ βίᾳ ἁρπασθεῖσα,
ἢ λόγοις πεισθεῖσα
ἢ ἔρωτι ἁλοῦσα
. . . .

πῶς οὖν χρὴ δίκαιον ἡγήσασθαι
τὸν τῆς Ἑλένης μῶμον,
ἥτις εἴτ' ἐρασθεῖσα
εἴτε λόγῳ πεισθεῖσα
εἴτε βίᾳ ἁρπασθεῖσα
εἴτε ὑπὸ θείας ἀνάγκη ἀναγκασθεῖσα
ἔπραξεν ἃ ἔπραξε, πάντως διαφεύγει τὴν αἰτίαν

Rosamond Kent Sprague translates these words as beautifully with:

For either by will[ed decision] of Fate
and [willed] decision of the gods
and vote of Necessity
did she do what she did,

or by force reduced
or by words seduced
or by love possessed.
. . . .
How then can one
blame of Helen as unjust,
since she is utterly
acquitted of all charge,
whether she did what she did
through falling in love
or persuaded by speech
or ravished by force
or constrained by divine constraint?

Plato, of course, can't stand it. So he writes his own play, the dramatic dialogue we call "The Gorgias" in which the central character is this slick sophist named Gorgias playing with words and taking money for it right out in public. But in this play of Plato, in which he plays with words all on his own, Plato has his teacher Socrates calling Gorgias out. Gorgias is the defender and praiser of the defecting defective woman - saying she may have been in "love." But the man Gorgias is just a "word lover," as vulnerable as Helen. In Greek, love is ἔρωτι /eroti/. This word plays (in Greek) with Plato's own play on words, the philosopher's neologism: ῥητορικῆς /rhetorikes/. Plato's Socrates gets Plato's Gorgias shamelessly to confess that what he's doing is "rhetoric" - something as filthy as "erotics." So, do we notice the hypocrisy of Plato? By putting words in the mouth of Gorgias, he actually invents here the word "rhetoric."

But we digress - isn't wordplay fun?

Now, French rhetorician Laurent Pernot explains:

Gorgias undertakes to excuse her by arguing that... she [Helen] could only have done so [run off with a non-Greek man] for one of these four reasons: (1) she obeyed the gods' commands; (2) she was carried off by force; (3) she was persuaded by speech; (4) she succumbed to love.

What Pernot (or perhaps our translations of Gorgias) fails to mention is that Helen, according to Gorgias, is worthy of praise for her decision. She's not just a passive damsel or a some-how compelled defector. No, she's also the master of her own destiny. She's a dissident. And men don't like it one little bit. The patriarchy is threatened. (Which brings up entirely different questions about whether and how Spector or Taylor or Plotz should be praised.)

Luce Irigaray gets at the questions of change, profound change, and who best might be the agents for such:

Patriarchal culture is a culture founded upon sacrifice, crime, and war. It lays upon every man the duty and the right to fight for food and shelter, to defend his possessions, and his family [even his women in and around his family] and [his] country as possessions. A decision about war from the patriarchy is necessary at this point but it will fall far short of providing cultural mutation. . . . Men are always plunging deeper and deeper into exploitation and plunder--without understanding very well why. Men go out in search of something they imagine they need without questioning who they are and the relationship between what they do and their identity.

To address such failures of understanding, I believe that the race of men needs the help of persons whose function would be to promote self-understanding among men and to set limits. Only women could fill this function. Women do not belong to the patriarchal culture as fully responsible subject. Hence they have the potential to interpret this culture in which they have fewer vested interests and involvement than men and in which they themselves are not so much products of the system as to be blinded by it. . . . Furthermore, women are not, in principle, supposed to be in hierarchical relation with men. All other minority groups are caught up in such hierarchies. And it is with a completely patriarchal, unconscious or cynical condescension that politicians and theoreticians interest themselves in such minorites and exploit them, with all the risks of the possible reversals of the master-slave relations. --Sexes and Genealogies, pages 186, 87.

Jane Stranz got me rereading Irigaray yesterday when she quoted her and then quoted Grace Jantzen quoting her:

"Love of God ... shows the way. God forces us to do nothing except become. The only task, the only obligation laid upon us is: to become divine men and women, to become perfectly, to refuse to allow parts of ourselves to shrivel and die that have the potential for growth and fulfilment."
--Luce Irigaray, Sexes and Genealogies

"According to Irigaray the wisdom that women and men in the postmodern world most require is the wisdom of becoming divine, without which we 'shrivel and die'."
--Grace Jantzen, Becoming Divine.

In light of the praise of Helen by Gorgias and the agency of women within the patriarchy where we find ourselves (as noted by Irigaray), Jane's quotations do offer men and women hope. Notice how a woman (unlike either the man Plato or the man Gorgias) is able to see love and God and words (without force) as agencies for change. If there is force, it is never forcing, and it is never war or abduction or abuse or rape.

If I were like Gorgias, I might ask you to pay me for this post and any cleverness therein. If I were like Plato, I might be a hypocrite by criticizing another for doing the very thing I was doing in my critique of him. If I were going to try to teach wordplay and poetry, to get students to overcome difficulties, I might have them look for examples (even in this post) of what George Steiner calls "epiphenomenal" or "tactical" or "modal" or "ontological" difficulties. If I were going to try to change the world myself, to abandon my own kind for the opposers, I think I might consider (more than the "telling strategy," more than the "forcing strategy," and even more than the "negotiating strategy") what Robert E. Quinn classifies as the self "transformation strategy."

I'm thinking instead about some fragmented (perhaps final) lines of Sappho's poem on Helen:

εὶ μεν ἴδ]μεν οὔ δύνατον γένεσθαι
λῷστ᾽] ὀν᾽ ἀνθρώποις, πεδέχην δ᾽ ἄραστηαι,
[τῶν πέδειχόν ἐστι βρότοισι λῷον]
[ἢ λελάθεσθαι.]

And about Anne Carson's even more fragmented translation of them:

]not possible to happen
]to pray for a share
]
]

I think by now you may have figured that I really do think some change is needed. I think by now you may also have figured out that I have enough on my plate for myself. I think by now you may have considered even that I'm not going to praise or criticize, to defend or denigrate, Specter, Taylor, Plotz, or even Helen. Are you?

Anything We Love Can Be Saved

Earlier this week (I learned this morning) a friend of mine hung himself, and another friend (of a friend) stood up at work, had a heart attack, fell hitting his head on the desk, and died.
Their widows and orphans “survive.”

And I’ve just been pondering “false dichotomies” in “translation.”

Last night, Daniel added this:

“I also generally don't like being forced into an 'either / or' choice. There are too many false dic[h]otomies that are pushed on us. However, when translating, there are choices that have to to be made. These choices often require...a trade off…a choice has to be made and a trade off appears to be unavoidable. Is there another way to translate this that maintains the cultural and historical context and also makes it easily comprehensible?”

And Nathan suggested something else:

“If a technical/historical term is used in translation, a modern equivalent could be footnoted for quick comparison.”

I’m still not stating the obvious. I’m not going to give in just yet by revealing an English word for the Greek word σταδίους (one that’s not a Latin, French, or English transliterated variant such as stadia; one that’s not kilomètres, miles, or furlongs, even footnoted). Double click stadia and σταδίους – or copy / paste them into answers.com; now what questions have the human programmers asked us when we’re all stumped? And which 8 or more options do “you” start with? If “you” did “want to search the web,” then were “you” able to picture anything better than this ancient Greek geek? Now did you click him here and find the word again?

Let’s get back to “false dichotomies.” If we move from imagined science to imaginastic art, then dichotomies (much less false ones) become less important. Alan Lightman (scientist artist writer) says that this way:

“Scientists often wish powerfully for some theory to be true that is later proved wrong by the facts. Aristotle’s idea that the planets move in perfect circles was simple and elegant, but proved wrong by Brahe, Kepler, and Newton.

A novelist's story or characters cannot be proved wrong, but they can ring false and thus lose their power. In this way, the novelist is constantly testing her fiction against the accumulated life experience of her readers.”

If we’re her and not him, then the dichotomies may become just another thing. Nancy Mairs says (“I am not a ‘real writer.’ I am a writer. Without modification.”), going on about scientific labels:

“...women, for a variety of reasons, live in a polymorphic rather than a dimorphic world, a world in which the differentiation of self from other may never completely take place, in which multiple selves may engage multiply with the multiple desires of the creatures in it.”

Now, I am neither a woman nor an expert translator of either any scientist or any artist. But any translator, Lightman acknowledges to me, is best both a scientist and an artist at the same time. How polymorphic is that? So I say:

Aristotle depended on dichotomies, clearly false ones, when he characterized females.

And the females around Jesus did a better job of tracking with his polymorphic parables than did the males. The parable that Mark (or was it Peter) tells first is especially polymorphic. Mark writes down into Greek what Jesus says and gives it to us, the world, in his that narrative in which he has the men closest to the Rabbi going to him privately to demand: “Be a little more straightforward with us. We know you’re not running one of Aristotle’s Academies but you should, at least, tell us what you are saying and what you do not mean to say. What we mean is, if you are God, give us the Word from heaven; don’t make us chew on it, for too much will get lost in the translation.” But Mark learns to translate anyway, and we get Jesus asking rhetorically as Aspasia might: “οὐκ οἴδατε τὴν παραβολὴν ταύτην καὶ πῶς πάσας τὰς παραβολὰς γνώσεσθε”

Now let me translate this logically: If you don’t get the one parable, then you don’t get any of them. If you don’t get any of them, then Isaiah’s already talked about you in Hebrew (Isaiah 6:9,10). If Isaiah’s talked about you, then you weren’t listening with ears to hear in the first place.

Now let me translate this with some English: Binaries (false or otherwise) are not our only choices. In fact, the binary approach can be deadly, forever. (And let me acknowledge, with Richard Rhodes, that Aristotle didn’t invent the Binary although he described it as natural quite well.) The parable or fable or "story thrown alongside yours" speaks of four choices. I’ll use 1) “describe,” 2) “prescribe,” 3) “transcribe,” and 4) “in(ter)scribe” to illustrate this time. (Other times, I’ve tried other words).

1) “Describe” is what most good linguists are after. If the translator loses that, then much is lost by the wayside. By the wayside fall these things: the original author’s intent and the text’s accuracy. Being descriptive employs the “telling strategy” that Robert E. Quinn talks about. A translation that is faithful to the original has taken advantage of the fact that a language scientist has described both languages well and ensures there’s no categorical mismatches. The translation overcomes the “epiphenomenal” or “contingency” difficulties that George Steiner talks about—if you want to know what the original says, then look it up in the faithful translation. EITHER the target language has fidelity to the source language in translation OR there’s absolutely no value in the translation.

2) “Prescribe” is what most good linguists loathe. If a translation is prescribed (as the KJV still is for many English Bible readers four centuries later), then there’s some initial reader joy but afterwards the reader actually has to read the thing. The roots of motivation are stunted by the shallow rocks of weird language, and the sunshine of the outdoors kills off any desire to live in the unfamiliar. Being prescriptive employs the “forcing strategy” that Robert E. Quinn talks about. A translation that is prescribed by a private Christian school, such as my daughter’s, has taken advantage of a powerful church tradition. The translation overcomes the “tactical” difficulties that George Steiner talks about—if you have a KJV Bible placed by the Gideons in the drawer of your hotel room (and if the tv is broken, the repair person is on vacation, the Inn is full, and you left your magazine on the counter at Starbucks), then you read it. EITHER you find it to be good literature OR when you get to the next wifi station you blog that the KJV has absolutely no literary value.

3) “Transcribe” is what most good linguists tolerate. If there’s a translation, then there’s been a transcription. Sure it raises all kinds of questions about authority, about originality, about orality, about forbidden gospels, about imaginary Q and JDEP, about the film versions especially “The Passion of the Christ” even before anyone could say “I told you so” after Mel Gibson’s drunken anti-Jew tirades, about literary translation, about dynamic equivalence (See “Describe” above), about formal equivalence, about Mohammed’s and Moses’s and Aristotle’s audacity to presume that copyists are better than translators (See “Prescribe” above). The thorns and weeds of liberals and postmodernists and feminists and tv preachers and atheists and agnostics choke out the word. Being transcriptive employs the “negotiating” or “win-win strategy” that Robert E. Quinn talks about. A transcription is a bunch of seeds on a photocopy machine. The translation overcomes the “modal” difficulties that George Steiner talks about—if your translator has been hesistant, then you get everything in transliteration. EITHER you go to graduate school, preferably divinity school, to learn the new vocabulary that sounds just like Latin, Greek, a bit of Aramaic, and Hebrew OR you download your favorite songs from last night’s American Idol on your iPod.

4) “In(ter)scribe” is what Kenneth Pike was talking about. Larry Wall has translated that into PERL, which means, following the motto “There’s More Than One Way To Do It,” the binary has become not the only thing, even with computers. The original dies. and gets resurrected. and is fruitful that way. and multiplies multiply. Mikhail Epstein calls it interlation (See “Transcribe” for “translation” above), in which something is not just lost but is found, in which the original and the new original are side by side so that any reader of the one can see the other and the reader of both sees more. It’s kind of like being emic and etic at the same time. Being in(ter)scriptive employs the “transformation strategy” that Robert E. Quinn talks about. An in(ter)scription is what Lydia He Liu says gets born after a guest language visits a host language and the two make a lifelong commitment and have babies together. The translation overcomes the “ontological” difficulties that George Steiner talks about—if your translation tells a story, then you get ears to hear and it sinks way down inside you and you change. Kind of like our mothers changed when they conceived us. Kind of like Jesus changed when his palms got inscribed.

So I think I’ll end this typically long post the way Pike ended his monolingual demonstrations: with poetry. Except my poems today aren’t originally mine. They’re Alice Walker’s, from her book Anything We Love Can Be Saved. My prayer is for ears to hear today.

TORTURE

When they torture your mother
plant a tree
When they torture your father
plant a tree
When they torture your brother
and your sister
plant a tree
When they assassinate
your leaders
and lovers
plant a tree
When they torture you
too bad
to talk
plant a tree.

When they begin to torture
the trees
and cut down the forest
they have made,
start another.

GOOD NIGHT, WILLIE LEE
I'LL SEE YOU IN THE MORNING
(Thereby bringing the spirits of my parents, Willie Lee and Minnie Lee Tallulah Walker, into the ceremony of your special day)

Looking down into my father's
dead face
for the last time
my mother said without
tears, without smiles
without regrets
but with civility
"Good night, Willie Lee, I'll see you
in the morning."
And it was then I knew that the healing
of all our wounds
is forgiveness
that permits a promise
of our return
at the end.

A WOMAN IS NOT
A POTTED PLANT

A woman is not
a potted plant
her roots bound
to the confines
of her house

a woman is not
a potted plant
her leaves trimmed
to the contours
of her sex

a woman is not
a potted plant
her branches
espaliered
against the fences
of her race
her country
her mother
her man

her trained blossom
turning
this way
& that
to follow
the sun
of whoever
feeds
and waters
her

a woman
is wilderness
unbounded
holding the future
between each breath
walking the earth
only because
she is free
and not creepervine
or tree.

Nor even honeysuckle
or bee.

WE HAVE A
BEAUTIFUL MOTHER

We have a beautiful
mother
Her hills
are buffaloes
Her buffaloes
hills.

We have a beautiful
mother
Her oceans
are wombs
Her wombs
oceans.

We have a beautiful
mother
Her teeth
the white stones
at the edge
of the water
the summer grasses
her plentiful
hair.

We have a beautiful
mother
Her green lap
immense
Her brown embrace
eternal
Her blue body
everything
we know.

(this final poem in my post comprises Walker’s final words in her book. I’m dedicating it to two widows and five orphaned daughters and sons this week. It appears in Walker’s book under a photo of her parents with this caption: Minnie Tallulah Grant Walker and Willie Lee Walker / PHOTO BY ITINERANT PHOTOGRAPHER / IN THE THIRTIES, EATONTON, GEORGIA)

For your bravery,
commitment
and love,
your daughter
thanks you.

Your belief in the love
of the world,
against all odds
and evidence,
is the fire that lights
my path.

Venecerémos!*

*We shall overcome.