Re-presenting Genesis: through a sexist, racist, anti-Semitic misogynist's eyes

"Well, he is a sexist, racist, anti-Semitic misogynist," says his second wife who is Jewish as was his first wife. And in answer to the question of whether Robert Crumb is in denial about having a foot fetish, she sets the record straight:

Legs and ass are No 1. He does not like fat women. He likes muscular, powerful women, physically and psychically!! He has strong footwear preferences but I would not consider him a foot fetishist.

She's been representing R.Crumb for some time now in relation to women, Jewish women, and muscular, powerful Jewish women.  On the cover of her "graphic memoir," Need More Love, she pictures herself as his type of covergirl:

And she appears with him, strong, on the poster of the documentary film about him:

But do you think that Aline Ricky Goldsmith Kominsky-Crumb can call Robert Crumb's graphic art sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, or misogynistic?  If she were to review his Genesis, would she say anything about his women and Jew denigrating illustrations of the first book of the Bible?  Could she?  Of course she could.

So why can't John Hobbins, who's praised David Peterson's review of R. Crumb's Genesis as "judicious"?  And why isn't Peterson's so-called judiciousness a recognition of Genesis through the eyes of a sexist, racist, anti-Semitic misogynist?  Here's why:

Hobbins quotes himself as having said:

The loathing Crumb inspires in a few, the accolades he receives from others, cast shadows and light on his most recent work . . . Crumb is a satirist. Satirists offend. Satirists offend by exaggerating truth.

Then he links to Peterson's review that offers:

To characterize Crumb’s tome as a graphic novel would be apt for another reason. Genesis is, indeed, a graphic book. In his drawings, Crumb does not hesitate to depict human bodies, violence, and sexual behavior in a graphic fashion, hence the aforementioned warning to minors. So, for example, the depiction of Lot and his daughters (Gen 19) or Judah and Tamar (Gen 34) leaves little to the imagination. Blood flies when Cain kills Abel. Some readers will, no doubt, complain about the overt depiction of sexual activity and violence.

What I think is fascinating is how Hobbins and Peterson and a whole host of other men love to focus on Crumb's art while, in contrast, his wife, an artist, loves to focus on Crumb himself in his art and in his life and as her art.  She doesn't just appreciate him for the satire or the way he offends or exaggerates.  She doesn't consider his truth so exaggerated or offensive so it seems.  She doesn't classify Crumb's representations of women and Jews as entirely different from Crumb the man, and goy.  She doesn't abstract his art from his self-loathing self.

In contrast, the sort of male abstracting that Hobbins does is akin to what men do when complaining to their wives, "Come on honey, I look at Playboy for the high-class articles."  The separation and the valuing separately conveniently allow men to allow men to denigrate women and, in some cases, certain races of women.  Now, I'm not accusing Hobbins of being blatant about this sort of Aristotelian categorization.  He's not necessarily in denial if he denies it.  He may have other intentions for praising Crumb's art as high satire apart from his blatant sexism and his expressed racism.  Nonetheless, it is convenient not to mention who Crumb is or at the very least who he has been or at the very very least who those being denigrated by Crumb recognize that he is.

Maybe some day, I'll write a review of Crumb's Genesis here at this blog.  He certainly includes some very interesting statements in the illustrated work on the text of Genesis and the sources of the stories therein.  Until then, and right now then, let me just link back to a few posts that have pointed out the abstracting reviews of R Crumb's Genesis by various men in the biblioblogosphere:  here, here, and here.

Ann Nyland Translates the Psalms

Ann Nyland has just published The Psalms: Translation with Notes.  I'm especially excited about it because she's doing some things with translation that are fairly important and fairly rare.

Two remarkable things about Nyland's translation are these:

first, she keeps Jewish words Jewish (or rather "retains the divine names of the Hebrew");

second, she uses not just the newer Masoretic Text of Hebrew (MT) but also the older Septuagint (LXX) text of Greek (both reflections, of course, of even older Hebrew).

In addition, it's worth noting that Nyland is like Willis Barnstone and Richmond Lattimore in that she's a Greek scholar.  Her translation of the New Testament like theirs attends to Greek word meanings prior to the NT, including meanings in the Septuagint and early and ancient Greek classics.  And each of these classics translators has translated the NT alone, and not as part of committees.  (Here's a post that compares the way the three handle a Greek "hapax legomenon").

Nyland's Psalms are similar to Barnstone's New Testament books and letters in that they retain Hebrew (i.e., Jewish) names.  Moreover, Barnstone does not read the Christian translation tradition back into his Restored New Testament; likewise, Nyland "does not read the New Testament back into the text" of the Psalms.  (A comparison between how Barnstone and Nyland translate Matthew 16:15-19 is here; note that Nyland when translating the New Testament used the more Christianized transliterations for the names.).

Nyland, like Robert Alter, who also translates the Psalms, uses both the MT and the LXX to render the psalms into English.  The poetry of the original languages is some reflected in the English; Nyland puts it this way: "as this [the book of Psalms] is a poetic work, the translation does leave in some of the poetic style of the original at the expense of good English." Nyland also handles "several Hebrew words or sentences the meaning of which is uncertain or unknown" by "leav[ing them] ambiguous, with an endnote, instead of making a decision for the reader."  Alter, similarly, avoids what he calls the "heresy of explanation" in translation by using footnotes to mark textual issues that need clarification for the reader.

There are at least three fairly unique things to note about Nyland and Nyland's translation:

First, she, by her translation, "avoids the Biblish dialect, that is, the type of [English] language that follows the syntax of the original language."  For Nyland, such a dialect may cause a "translation error" in that it might "invent a tone that was not there in the original."  She gives several examples of biblish or "common [language] use with Christians" both in translations of the Bible and in social communication.

Second, Nyland's "translation does not attempt to translate the Psalms into poetry" as Alter's translation of the Psalms does and as Barnstone's translation of some of the gospel writings does.  Nyland does offer commentary on some of the poems in her endnotes; for example, she distinguishes Canaanite and Israelits poems and explains when the Septuagint but not the Hebrew Bible contains a poem.

Third, Nyland has had to work in ways that most men don't.  Neither Alter nor Barnstone nor Lattimore, of course, were ever disparaged for being a woman, for being a feminist, as Nyland has been so disparaged.  Her interview with Wayne Leman at Better Bibles Blog gets into some of that.  To be clear, Nyland has taken on the mostly male Bible translation establishment with essays such as in More Than Meets The Eye: THE CAMPAIGN TO CONTROL GENDER TRANSLATION BIBLES.  Nyland has a blog at which she says this rather explicitly about herself: "I breed, ride and train the old-fashioned type of Arabian horses; also Quarab horses, am a Bible translator." And elsewhere on the Internet, she converses about translation as the woman Bible translator, Ann Nyland.  Her Bible Translation blog is worth a careful read:  http://womenministers.blogspot.com/


For a sample of Nyland's work on the Psalms, I've included her translation of Psalm 8 in another post today.

Ann Nyland Translates Psalm 8

Ann Nyland has translated the Psalms in a new volume published with her notes just last month (March 2, 2010).  Her translation of Psalm 8 follows (from pages 15 - 16 and page 213, which you might compare with other translations and appropriations I've been looking at recently).

8.

For the music director.  According to the gittith,²⁶ a psalm of David.
1 Yahweh, our Adon,²⁷
how majestic is your name throughout the earth,
you who place your magnificence upon the heavens.
2 From the mouths of children and nursing babies
you establish strength because of your enemies,
so that you might silence the enemy and the avenger.
3 When I see your heavens, the works of your fingers,
and see the moon and the starts, which you established,
4 what is humankind, that you should notice them,
5 and make them a little less that the elohim?²⁸
You crown humankind with honor and magnificence,
6 you permit them to rule over works of your hands,
you have place everything under their authority,
7 including all the sheep and cattle,
as well as the beasts of the fields,
8 the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea,
and everything that moves through the currents of the seas.
9 Yahweh, our Adon,
how majestic is your name throughout the earth!

²⁶  The Septuagint has, "For the end, concerning the wine presses, a psalm of David."
²⁷  Adon, a divine name.  Used of a lord, a master, a ruler, a prophet, a priest, or a king.  Used for example as "master" in Psalm 12:4
²⁸  Elohim, a divine name, also used for rulers, heavenly beings, divine possessions.  Not translated here as referent unknown.