Richard Alan Rhodes tells the world his middle name when translating one of the family names in the Bible - "using Barnstone’s idea of making the translation [to] sound more Jewish, especially in the names."
Of course, what Rich meant to say is he was using Willis's idea of making the translation sound less exclusionary of the Jews, especially less-Christian-only in the names.
BTW, the family name "Barnstone" is neither Jewish nor Polish. What is it?
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Aristotle's Dreams
When Alan Lightman wrote Einstein's Dreams, he was writing as an artist not as a scientist, he says. It's fiction. But he's getting into something miraculous, something deeply connected to the nature of the science of the scientist: the dreams of Einstein without which (the reader begins to believe) there could have been Einstein's waking thoughts - all part and parcel of Einstein's coming to believe in his theory, of relativity. Now, that's some science.
Elsewhere, I've noted how Lightman must concede that the translation of his novel, into say Japanese, must be as much art as it is science and, therefore, must be as much science as it is art - if it is to be any good at all, relatively speaking.
Aristotle understood Lightman's concession. So Aristotle was not fond of translation of his original, scientific Greek texts into some bar-bar-ic (and therefore lesser) mother tongue. It would necessarily be too womanly, too rhetorical. Because it was not good Greek, it would certainly have ambiguity, contradiction, emotion, evasiveness, fluidity and flux, hyperbole, hyperphysics (that is, the "supernatural" and the "miraculous" and such), metaphor, motion, parable, paradox, poetics, subjectivity, vagueness, and wetness. It would fall by the wayside of the author's intent.
Aristotle would not at all have liked, for example, that J. I. Beare presumes in En-Glish to represent what he writes in Hellene, on dreams. And, if you are a dreamy illusive female reading, then that's even worse: "So much at least is plain on all these points, viz. that the faculty by which, in waking hours, we are subject to illusion when affected by disease, is identical with that which produces illusory effects in sleep." For the dreamy, especially those presuming to prophesy miraculously by dreams, are as atrabilious as the readers of "the poems of Philaegides, e.g. the Aphrodite." One must note, likewise, that "Persons, too, who have fallen into a deep trance, and have come to be regarded as dead, say many things while in this condition." Reality, nature, and logic, in contrast, are all fixed. (Following the author, then, J. I. Beare wants his translation fixed to the nature of the original text.) Reality, nature, and logic (and Mr. Beare's very awake translation) are absolutely fixed (we notice in our barbaric readings) to Aristotle's advantage.
When Aristotle wrote about the reality of the rule in the household, he used logic. When Aristotle criticized Plato's and Socrates dialectic, he used logic. When Aristotle defined rhetoric (as a counterpart to dialectic), he again used logic. When Aristotle went to Lesbos to research animals, animal sleep, animals having dreams, animal sex, and animals having sex - he used logic. (And I just have to throw this in: he was fascinated that the Lesbians, those living in Mythilene in particular, would praise the poet "Sappho, though she was a woman" - and he says so in the Rhetoric). Women change, and wet females change too much. Males, especially the Greek boys of Aristotle's Academy, therefore in contrast are rather fixed in their nature.
But I imagine Aristotle dreaming nonetheless, and remembering his own subjective dream upon waking. Here he is observing objectively but then falling, falling asleep as he looks at the fixed cocoon of a caterpillar. He ripped up this page from The History of Animals, but Christian hippie rocker Larry Norman sang it anyway (as a mere bonus track, on the album "So Long Ago the Garden," called "Butterfly"):
Saw you underneath the leaf,
And that's when I decided to be a thief
I said, "Honey, you're a pretty cocoon,
I just know you're gonna come out soon.
You're a butterfly,
Yes I know, and I love you,
pretty butterfly,
won't you let it show?
pretty butterfly,
won't you come out just for me?
Yeah.
You're a butterfly
You're beautiful
But you did not know it.
You're a butterfly
You're beautiful
But you did not show it.
You needed warmth.
You needed love.
You needed Nature
to give you a shove.
If you wanna start livin'
Then you've gotta start tryin'
Spread your wings
And fill the sky.
You're a butterfly,
Yes I know,
pretty butterfly,
you gotta let it show,
pretty butterfly,
won't you come out just for me?
Yeah.
won't you come out just for me?
Now look at you
(and Norman & his boys
play a bit without words
here).
You're a butterfly,
Yes I know,
pretty butterfly,
But it's time to go
pretty butterfly,
Yeah
it's time for me
to set you free.
....
One more thing,
before you go
(It's something
I never let anyone know):
I am so lonely
so confused
But I never will forget the day
I dreamed today
and passed along your way
. . .
Saw you underneath the leaf,
And that's when I decided to be a thief
I said, "Honey, you're a pretty cocoon,
I just know you're gonna come out soon.
You're a butterfly
and I love you
pretty butterfly
but it's time to go
pretty butterfly
Yeah
It's time for me to set you free.
(bye bye
baby).
Elsewhere, I've noted how Lightman must concede that the translation of his novel, into say Japanese, must be as much art as it is science and, therefore, must be as much science as it is art - if it is to be any good at all, relatively speaking.
Aristotle understood Lightman's concession. So Aristotle was not fond of translation of his original, scientific Greek texts into some bar-bar-ic (and therefore lesser) mother tongue. It would necessarily be too womanly, too rhetorical. Because it was not good Greek, it would certainly have ambiguity, contradiction, emotion, evasiveness, fluidity and flux, hyperbole, hyperphysics (that is, the "supernatural" and the "miraculous" and such), metaphor, motion, parable, paradox, poetics, subjectivity, vagueness, and wetness. It would fall by the wayside of the author's intent.
Aristotle would not at all have liked, for example, that J. I. Beare presumes in En-Glish to represent what he writes in Hellene, on dreams. And, if you are a dreamy illusive female reading, then that's even worse: "So much at least is plain on all these points, viz. that the faculty by which, in waking hours, we are subject to illusion when affected by disease, is identical with that which produces illusory effects in sleep." For the dreamy, especially those presuming to prophesy miraculously by dreams, are as atrabilious as the readers of "the poems of Philaegides, e.g. the Aphrodite." One must note, likewise, that "Persons, too, who have fallen into a deep trance, and have come to be regarded as dead, say many things while in this condition." Reality, nature, and logic, in contrast, are all fixed. (Following the author, then, J. I. Beare wants his translation fixed to the nature of the original text.) Reality, nature, and logic (and Mr. Beare's very awake translation) are absolutely fixed (we notice in our barbaric readings) to Aristotle's advantage.
When Aristotle wrote about the reality of the rule in the household, he used logic. When Aristotle criticized Plato's and Socrates dialectic, he used logic. When Aristotle defined rhetoric (as a counterpart to dialectic), he again used logic. When Aristotle went to Lesbos to research animals, animal sleep, animals having dreams, animal sex, and animals having sex - he used logic. (And I just have to throw this in: he was fascinated that the Lesbians, those living in Mythilene in particular, would praise the poet "Sappho, though she was a woman" - and he says so in the Rhetoric). Women change, and wet females change too much. Males, especially the Greek boys of Aristotle's Academy, therefore in contrast are rather fixed in their nature.
But I imagine Aristotle dreaming nonetheless, and remembering his own subjective dream upon waking. Here he is observing objectively but then falling, falling asleep as he looks at the fixed cocoon of a caterpillar. He ripped up this page from The History of Animals, but Christian hippie rocker Larry Norman sang it anyway (as a mere bonus track, on the album "So Long Ago the Garden," called "Butterfly"):
Saw you underneath the leaf,
And that's when I decided to be a thief
I said, "Honey, you're a pretty cocoon,
I just know you're gonna come out soon.
You're a butterfly,
Yes I know, and I love you,
pretty butterfly,
won't you let it show?
pretty butterfly,
won't you come out just for me?
Yeah.
You're a butterfly
You're beautiful
But you did not know it.
You're a butterfly
You're beautiful
But you did not show it.
You needed warmth.
You needed love.
You needed Nature
to give you a shove.
If you wanna start livin'
Then you've gotta start tryin'
Spread your wings
And fill the sky.
You're a butterfly,
Yes I know,
pretty butterfly,
you gotta let it show,
pretty butterfly,
won't you come out just for me?
Yeah.
won't you come out just for me?
Now look at you
(and Norman & his boys
play a bit without words
here).
You're a butterfly,
Yes I know,
pretty butterfly,
But it's time to go
pretty butterfly,
Yeah
it's time for me
to set you free.
....
One more thing,
before you go
(It's something
I never let anyone know):
I am so lonely
so confused
But I never will forget the day
I dreamed today
and passed along your way
. . .
Saw you underneath the leaf,
And that's when I decided to be a thief
I said, "Honey, you're a pretty cocoon,
I just know you're gonna come out soon.
You're a butterfly
and I love you
pretty butterfly
but it's time to go
pretty butterfly
Yeah
It's time for me to set you free.
(bye bye
baby).
Friday, May 1, 2009
But Esau I hated
"But Esau I hated" is the other half of what the Lord says, in a binary and contrastive statement, to Malachi - in the spoken literature of Malachi (1:3).
"Type B translations, to the idiosyncrasies of the target language and the felt needs of a particular demographic for whom the translation is designed" is the other half of what John Hobbins says as he begins a binary and contrastive blog series (so very ironically) on the two types of "gender-sensitive translation."
"[R]eading the Hebrew Bible as you'd peruse the newspaper . . . [and as] an isolated literary classic . . . as you'd read a novel" is the other half of what David Klinghoffer says, in a binary and contrastive rule, about reading the Bible (which is akin to reading the Quran).
Too many students "in the classroom . . . assume what is said by these authors [in recording miracles] is what actually happened, could have happened, might have happened, or should have happened," is the other side of April DeConick's definite definitive conclusion to the binary and contrastive question Should a reader say YES or NO "to the miraculous as history"?
"'scholars' of literature, who could never get away with their kind of thinking in science, in history, or even in theology," is the other side of Peter Kirk's ostensibly objective opinion about observers of the language of the Bible, his binary and contrastive point.
"[T]hese writers in English," is the other side of the pronouncement of Rich Rhodes - yes a binary and contrastive pronouncement - on what "literature" is and what it canNOT be..
"It is well known that in biblical dialogue all the characters speak proper literary Hebrew, with no intimations of slang, dialect, or idiolect," is the other side of Robert Alter's absolute statement - yes binary and contrastive.
Alter's statement, I was trying to say, is the binary and contrastive alternative to Rhodes's statement (as if there must be these two and these two only). As if these two Berkeley scholars (one the Hebrew scholar, the other the language scientist) have all there is to say here. As if the one speaks for one side, and the other side once sided against, THEREFORE, is the lesser.
(Thankfully, Theophrastus gives Alter's entire statement.) So I'm tempted here to add Alter's wonderful footnote to his incredible translation of Genesis 25:30. Just as I was tempted to go ahead with the actual example in the actual point of Alter's statement. (Theophrastus asked - confessed actually - "I don’t know why J.K. put the ellipses in his quote of Alter — suggesting a word that was a bit untoward." Quite an interesting suggestion, I must add.)
Is it important exactly what Esau said?
Is it important exactly what Moses wrote that Esau said, and exactly how?
Is it important exactly how different the quotation of Esau is from the quotation of Jacob?
Is it important exactly how different what Moses wrote that Esau said is from what Moses wrote that Jacob and everyone else speaking in the Hebrew Bible said?
Is it important exactly how different what Moses wrote that Esau said is from what is written in the Hebrew Bible by Moses and by absolutely any other author (including the author of Job)?
Is it important that the LXX translator(s) use δὲ when rendering the high Hebrew of Malachi 1:3 into homeric Hellene?
Are we not getting the issue with, the problem with, the patriarchy propped up by, Aristotle's binary method?
Shall we call Aristotle God when he stands over and objectively, with his binary and contrastive statements? "But the female I hated," said Aristotle.
Which begs the rhetorical question: "whom and what do you hate?" "what and whom do I?"
Which returns us to how easy it is for any of us to read and to translate (as if objectively, merely logically) the difficult spoken literature of Malachi (1:3).
"Type B translations, to the idiosyncrasies of the target language and the felt needs of a particular demographic for whom the translation is designed" is the other half of what John Hobbins says as he begins a binary and contrastive blog series (so very ironically) on the two types of "gender-sensitive translation."
"[R]eading the Hebrew Bible as you'd peruse the newspaper . . . [and as] an isolated literary classic . . . as you'd read a novel" is the other half of what David Klinghoffer says, in a binary and contrastive rule, about reading the Bible (which is akin to reading the Quran).
Too many students "in the classroom . . . assume what is said by these authors [in recording miracles] is what actually happened, could have happened, might have happened, or should have happened," is the other side of April DeConick's definite definitive conclusion to the binary and contrastive question Should a reader say YES or NO "to the miraculous as history"?
"'scholars' of literature, who could never get away with their kind of thinking in science, in history, or even in theology," is the other side of Peter Kirk's ostensibly objective opinion about observers of the language of the Bible, his binary and contrastive point.
"[T]hese writers in English," is the other side of the pronouncement of Rich Rhodes - yes a binary and contrastive pronouncement - on what "literature" is and what it canNOT be..
"It is well known that in biblical dialogue all the characters speak proper literary Hebrew, with no intimations of slang, dialect, or idiolect," is the other side of Robert Alter's absolute statement - yes binary and contrastive.
Alter's statement, I was trying to say, is the binary and contrastive alternative to Rhodes's statement (as if there must be these two and these two only). As if these two Berkeley scholars (one the Hebrew scholar, the other the language scientist) have all there is to say here. As if the one speaks for one side, and the other side once sided against, THEREFORE, is the lesser.
(Thankfully, Theophrastus gives Alter's entire statement.) So I'm tempted here to add Alter's wonderful footnote to his incredible translation of Genesis 25:30. Just as I was tempted to go ahead with the actual example in the actual point of Alter's statement. (Theophrastus asked - confessed actually - "I don’t know why J.K. put the ellipses in his quote of Alter — suggesting a word that was a bit untoward." Quite an interesting suggestion, I must add.)
Is it important exactly what Esau said?
Is it important exactly what Moses wrote that Esau said, and exactly how?
Is it important exactly how different the quotation of Esau is from the quotation of Jacob?
Is it important exactly how different what Moses wrote that Esau said is from what Moses wrote that Jacob and everyone else speaking in the Hebrew Bible said?
Is it important exactly how different what Moses wrote that Esau said is from what is written in the Hebrew Bible by Moses and by absolutely any other author (including the author of Job)?
Is it important that the LXX translator(s) use δὲ when rendering the high Hebrew of Malachi 1:3 into homeric Hellene?
Are we not getting the issue with, the problem with, the patriarchy propped up by, Aristotle's binary method?
Shall we call Aristotle God when he stands over and objectively, with his binary and contrastive statements? "But the female I hated," said Aristotle.
Which begs the rhetorical question: "whom and what do you hate?" "what and whom do I?"
Which returns us to how easy it is for any of us to read and to translate (as if objectively, merely logically) the difficult spoken literature of Malachi (1:3).
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