mentally bifocal

“Hot! Every word of Aristotle exposed!” These diglot-peddlers lack shame

I have an embarrassing confession to make... when I get stuck, I have sometimes weakened and allowed my eye to wander over to the right-hand pages.

Yesterday, a fellow blogger got me laughing out loud when he'd written these words.  So much of the sarcasm resonates with me; it's his parody of the fear of a both-and world that so many have.  Most would prefer an either-or world.  Especially when it comes to the Bible, especially when it comes to the singular notion of absolute Truth, the fear is that one may be wrong while The Other, so different, just may be right.  Before I'd read my fellow blogger's silliness, with more seriousness, I blogged a bit yesterday on three examples of this fear.

Today, I'd like to blog on the value of the diglot.  There's value in having one original language open to a page in a translation of that original.  There's value as much or more in being "mentally bifocal," as Pearl S. Buck put it.  If we were to read that in her English, we'd find it in her autobiography My Several Worlds.  If we were to read it in Italian, then we might go here to find it also as "La mente bifocale."  If we were reading it in English but were trying to understand it, to translate it, into Chinese (which is one of Pearl S. Buck's languages in one of her several worlds), then we might start here.  The point is that we could not stay just in one place, within our comfort zone, a zone of limited-perception singular monocular objectivity, with the Other over there not having any part of me or mine.

"Aristotle exposed," indeed.  Until you've just begun to struggle, some with others, with how his words are so like and so unlike your own, then what's the value of knowing him?  Maya Angelou, for example, who was raped by a misogynistic gynophobe when she was an 8-year-old girl, listens rhetorically to Aristotle and insists, rather exclaims!:  "One needs to know Aristotle.... One needs it desperately....  Must! I mean desperately... if one is to be at ease anywhere."  How has she come to know this need to know?  There's something on the other side from me, isn't there?

Much more positively if more theoretically, Mikhail Epstein speaks of stereotextuality and of interlation.  He's saying that a diglot (and this might apply to a Loeb classical library edition of any of Aristotle's works or even to the Bible with its "absolute Truth" for the fearful and its multiple languages for the willing) has value.  Do you notice, reading Epstein's essay, however, how he ends up asking questions?

Can an idea be adequately presented in a single language? Or do we need a minimum of two languages (as with two eyes or two ears) to convey the volume of a thought or image? Will we, at some future time, accustom ourselves to new genres of stereo poetry and stereo philosophy as we have become accustomed to stereo music and stereo cinema? Will the development of translingual discourses (or, in Bakhtin's words, "the mutual illumination and interanimation of languages") become a hallmark of our century?

Well, I go back to little Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker, to her century now, not ours anymore.  Reading her autobiography, I notice how in the mornings she was working with her mother on the schooling called the Calvert method (named after Lord Baltimore Calvert).  I remember doing the very same thing with the very same curriculum with my mother.  Then she'd go study, differently, with her Chinese tutor.  And so I remember with my tutors, the Vietnamese ones.  This is her context for her stereotexting, for her interlating, for her bifocal mentality.  She speaks of the "damage" it caused.  But how seriously do you want to take that?  She's also speaking of racism and of sexism.  Let me exclaim.  She's also speaking of racism and of sexism!  Of the need for a kalaidescope, as Jacqueline Jones Royster does:

Using subject position as a terministic screen in cross-boundary discourse permits analysis to operate kaleidoscopically, thereby permitting interpretation to be richly informed by the converging of dialectical perspectives.

Had Jacqueline Jones Royster and Pearl S. Buck talked, I think they would have understood this together.  Young Pearl began this valuable kaleidoscopic listening and learning early.

I became mentally bifocal, and so I learned early to understand that there is no such condition in human affairs as absolute truth. There is only truth as people see it, and truth, even in fact, may be kaleidoscopic in its variety. The damage such perception did to me I have felt ever since, although damage may be too dark a word, for it merely meant that I could never belong entirely to one side of any question. To be a Communist would be absurd to me, as absurd as to be entirely anything and equally impossible. I straddled the globe too young.

Later in life Pearl saw, as Jacqueline feels every day, the double-sided difficulties of people who only see one side, who only understand what it is like to be singularly absolutely in the American majority in the world.  Pearl, in 1941, when America was still very profoundly full of race prejudice, wrote this:

Profound as race prejudice is against the Negro American, it is not practically as far-reaching as the prejudice against women. For stripping away the sentimentality which makes Mother’s Day and Best American Mother Contests, the truth is that women suffer all the effects of a minority.

Is this despair?  Or do you yourself know these sides of things?  The value of them?  Does Pearl S. Buck with her binocular mind and words really threaten the "authority of God's word" as this blogger suggests she does?  Or isn't there value in seeing something beyond your own supposed objectivity, of reading the Bible as a diglot even?

Women and Bibles and Jews! Oh my!

This is a continuation of ESV, Luther Bible, and Jewish Women, a post started earlier in conversation with Suzanne's. I suppose there's not much more to give except (a) reminders and (b) illustrations.

(a) The reminders are these:

Jewish-German-bible-translating rhetorical-poetry writing women, such as Gertrud Kolmar, can sound like Martin Luther if they wish. (Listen again - "This towel is dirty beyond all measure.") And they can sound otherwise too. ("You hear me speak. But do you hear me feel?")

In contrast, men who put women down only sound one way. There's a motivator for this: fear masked as logic. For example, the gynophobic Aristotle is afraid to sound like a woman. And Luther (as Aristotle-loathing as he becomes) is nonetheless still fearful of letting a women speak; so he says, even around his own family's dinner table, things like "There is no gown or garment that worse becomes a woman than when she will be wise" and "Never any good came out of female domination. God created Adam master and lord of living creatures, but Eve spoilt all, when she persuaded him to set himself above God's will. 'Tis you women, with your tricks and artifices, that lead men into error." And Wayne Grudem, one of the dozen male-only members of the ESV Translation Oversight Committee, also seems afraid to listen to a women teaching: first, he strangely uses a cobbled excerpt from a secondary source to warrant (incorrectly) that "Aristotle 'believed that men and women should have the same education and training'" in order to conclude that feminists are just wrong about the Greek inequality of education for females; and, second, Grudem oddly uses the Bible itself to claim that women cannot teach men because "It is the order of creation" (pages 173, 176 of his chapter, "Feminist Views Based on Untruthful Claims," in his book, Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?).

Luther, his 1984 revisers, and the ESV team members sometimes ironically downplay the sexism of the text. Their masculinist translations that would have a woman naturally silent are translations that curiously downplay the misogyny by masking over the prominence and dominance of the man. It's as if the translators want to say, "Yes, God's image includes boy image and girl image. But let's just not make a big feminist deal right now out of what natural order of creation is, namely male over fe-male, man over wo-man. Let's just let fe-males and wo-men fit into this default, unmarked world (of us males and men)."

Perhaps these male translators want to hear a woman speak. But if so they want to hear her speaking to other women, and to children.

Perhaps these male translators want to hear a woman speak. But can they hear her feel?

(b) Some illustrations are these:

The only bit I need to show in this post is Exodus 35:20-22. The only bit of textual commentary I'm going to make is this little note of advice:

"Pay attention to the (masked over) male nouns (i.e., / בן ben / איש 'iysh / אנוש 'enowsh / איש 'iysh /) and to their relation to the explicit feminine nouns (i.e., both the grammatically feminine /עדה `edah / and the semantically fe-male /אשה 'ishshah /) and to how the pronouns are constructed in relation to these nouns."

Now, here we go:

ESV Exodus 35:
20 Then all the congregation of the people of Israel departed from the presence of Moses.
21 And they came,
everyone whose heart stirred him,
and everyone whose spirit moved him,
and brought the LORD’s contribution to be used for the tent of meeting,
and for all its service,
and for the holy garments.
22 So they came,
both men and women.
All who were of a willing heart brought brooches and earrings and signet rings and armlets, all sorts of gold objects,
every man dedicating an offering of gold to the LORD.

Luther Bible (revised 1984) Exodus 35:
20 Da ging die ganze Gemeinde der Israeliten von Mose weg.
21 Und alle, die es gern und freiwillig gaben, kamen
und brachten dem HERRN die Opfergabe zur Errichtung der Stiftshütte
und für allen Dienst darin
und für die heiligen Kleider.
22 Es brachten
aber Männer und Frauen
freiwillig Spangen, Ohrringe, Ringe und Geschmeide und allerlei goldenes Gerät, ein jeder das Gold,
das er zur Gabe für den HERRN bestimmt hatte.

Luther (original)
20 Da ging die ganze Gemeinde der Kinder Israel aus von Mose.
...
22 ... Dazu brachte jedermann Gold zum Webeopfer dem HERRN.

In contrast, here is Julia E. Smith, letting the inherent sexism of the text show in her transparent literal translation of Exodus 35:
20 And all the assembly of the sons of Israel will go forth from before Moses.
21 And they will come,
every man whose heart lifted him up
and every one whose spirit impelled him,
and they brought the offering of Jehovah to the work of the tent of appointment,
and for all its work, and for the garments of the holy place.
22 And they will come,
the men with the women,
all of a willing heart,
they brought rings, and ear-rings, and seals, and globules of gold, all vessels of gold:
and every man who lifted up a waving of gold to Jehovah.

And here's some Jews' translation of their own scriptures into Greek (again letting the male dominance show in the text of) Exodus 35:
20 καὶ ἐξῆλθεν πᾶσα συναγωγὴ υἱῶν Ισραηλ ἀπὸ Μωυσῆ
21 καὶ ἤνεγκαν
ἕκαστος ὧν ἔφερεν αὐτῶν ἡ καρδία,
καὶ ὅσοις ἔδοξεν τῇ ψυχῇ αὐτῶν,
ἤνεγκαν ἀφαίρεμα κυρίῳ εἰς πάντα τὰ ἔργα τῆς σκηνῆς τοῦ μαρτυρίου
καὶ εἰς πάντα τὰ κάτεργα αὐτῆς
καὶ εἰς πάσας τὰς στολὰς τοῦ ἁγίου.
22 καὶ ἤνεγκαν
οἱ ἄνδρες παρὰ τῶν γυναικῶν·
πᾶς, ᾧ ἔδοξεν τῇ διανοίᾳ,
ἤνεγκαν σφραγῖδας καὶ ἐνώτια καὶ δακτυλίους καὶ ἐμπλόκια καὶ περιδέξια, πᾶν σκεῦος χρυσοῦν,
καὶ πάντες, ὅσοι ἤνεγκαν ἀφαιρέματα χρυσίου κυρίῳ.

Now the Hebrew:

20

וַיֵּצְאוּ כָּל־עֲדַת בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵל מִלִּפְנֵי מֹשֶֽׁה׃

21

וַיָּבֹאוּ כָּל־אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר־נְשָׂאֹו לִבֹּו וְכֹל אֲשֶׁר נָדְבָה רוּחֹו אֹתֹו הֵבִיאוּ אֶת־תְּרוּמַת יְהוָה לִמְלֶאכֶת אֹהֶל מֹועֵד וּלְכָל־עֲבֹדָתֹו וּלְבִגְדֵי הַקֹּֽדֶשׁ׃
22

וַיָּבֹאוּ הָאֲנָשִׁים עַל־הַנָּשִׁים כֹּל נְדִיב לֵב הֵבִיאוּ חָח וָנֶזֶם וְטַבַּעַת וְכוּמָז כָּל־כְּלִי זָהָב וְכָל־אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר הֵנִיף תְּנוּפַת זָהָב לַיהוָֽה׃

Interpretation Hurts

When I was a white kid in Vietnam during the war, the women at the market would argue with Chị Năm about who my mama was. "Mỹ lai không?" they'd ask rhetorically (which, between spits of saliva-mixed betelnut, is the impolite equivalent of "Isn't this infant an Amerasian whose foreign-daddy paid a careless-lucky whore in Xã Chín?") They'd pinch my cheeks until my face wore rouge and pulled on my fair hair until my head hurt. That's not the whole story, of course, nor the only one, but it is the start.

When I teach in the university in America now, why would I want to suppress the ambiguities? I'll often start an ESL course with the "old woman / young woman" optical illusion. Except I'll print it on a piece of paper, cut off the corners of the picture to make a perfect circle, wad it up, and toss it to a volunteer who opens the thing and works with the entire class to describe, in English, what they see. Usually, they have no trouble orienting the drawing so that the top is the top. Eventually, they begin to see the artist's intended contrast between "old and young." Invariably, with luck, they see more: "These are females." "They are white." "Maybe American women." "They have a rich husband, a father with money." "They are educated." "They speak English." "They have nice clothes." That's not the whole story, of course.

When I checked out Toni Morrison's Beloved from the library and listened to her narrating her novel on audiotape, Sethe had a different voice from the one I'd heard when I read the book before. She still said, "I got a tree on my back and a haint in my house, and nothing in between but the daughter I am holding in my arms. . . . A chokecherry tree. Trunk, branches, and even leaves. Tiny little chokecherry leaves. Them boys found out I told on em. and when it closed it made a tree. It still grows there still." [They used a cowhide on you?] "And they took my milk." That's not the whole story, of course.

The start is invariably your own subjective perspective, your perspectives. Of course, "not anything goes" in your interpretation, or in mine. Of course, the story continues. Of course. But why ever . . . how really . . . do we prefer cold objectivity to life, to living, even if it's painful?

When is the Puzzle(r) Sexist? Ask Your Daughter

Using subject position as a terministic screen in cross-boundary discourse permits analysis to operate kaleidoscopically, thereby permitting interpretation to be richly informed by the converging of dialectical perspectives.
--Jacqueline Jones Royster
“When the First Voice You Hear is Not Your Own”

Sometimes a man’s ostensible attempts at objective representation is more problematic than just a jigsaw puzzle.

My daughter has her Honors Biology final today. Last night, she asked me to help her review the material. Much in the textbook, explicitly, is directly from Aristotle. In fact, he’s given credit for the classifications and the classification system as a “scientist and philosopher.” The test is over various Phyla and Classes of lower level species, and the textbook is fairly thorough, just as is Aristotle. What the book leaves out, is Aristotle’s discussion of females. He claims females leave a lot out that whole males complete. My daughter, in talking about that, has lots of questions about the credibility of Aristotle, and of his observational method. So do I.

Then, this morning, I read David Ker’s latest post on puzzles. It’s another fantastic one, asking about what people in Mozambique (professor Ker’s students) have to interpret when they read certain things and when they look at what a particular artist “represents” in a picture. David gave his students a picture puzzle, and now he’s been giving his blog readers in English the same puzzle in series. Early on, he asked blog readers: “What do jigsaw puzzles have to do with the discussion . . . ”? Now he guides us to answers:

What's wrong with this picture? It's pretty unlikely that . . . ! Imagine the art director for . . . [the] Magazine talking to the illustrator and saying, “For this story we want a picture of . . . ” Then the illustrator went to the drawing board and thought to himself, “What kind of picture can my young readers understand?” The result was this . . . . Does this image have any relation to the actual historical event?”

Now some questions that David Ker doesn’t ask, but our daughters do.

1. Isn’t it ironic that men feel like they have to conceive of biology or history as a jigsaw puzzle, and yet some of the biggest pieces left out are females?
2. Why in our imagined hierarchy is there an “art director” directing art to “the illustrator” who directs the representation of some “actual historical event” to “my young readers”? Why, along the hierarchical chain here, must we imagine the “illustrator” to be a male by default, who must represent down to children?
3. Why does a King trying to solve a puzzle at his own dinner table say to his own child, “You son of a perverse and rebellious woman!” Why is the story, in history, represented this way by the male historian? And why don’t we, whether in the West or in Mozambique ask ourselves where is she, this woman? And why can’t she represent herself? Is she just a missing piece of our puzzle, to represent a father, a son, and another man who would be king?
4. And when professor Ker has us blog readers “Imagine the trouble we had several years ago translating this [other] strange scene . . .,” why do we not by default find it unimaginable that the very strange thing is that the woman in this history is always unnamed (to this day!)? Why is she always the representative “sinner” in the story, and represented as “at his feet, weeping, and began[ing] to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair”? Is she just a missing piece of our puzzle really only, mainly, to represent our Western or Mozambiquan or Jewish imaginations of him?

I suppose this is very difficult for some of us. Not because it’s some puzzle of history, or of art. But because we are so reflexively trained to ask certain questions, and not others. We think with our “objectivity” (i.e., from the perspective at the top of the hierarchical heap) as the best way to solve our problems. Are we afraid that our subjectivity is going to miss something? Or, really, is it just maybe we are afraid that subjectivity’s going to knock us down off our (male, Western, interpreting and translating for others) high horse?

My daughter asks me, “Why don’t I get to study psychology in high school?” And she, just completing her first year, is starting to see that there are some things very personal that biology, Aristotle-style, just leaves missing. She’s also in Honors Bible at her private Christian school. Can you imagine her questions about that subject? “Why do men say so much about women without letting the women say much of anything?” Good questions for us men and women to ask.