NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS

Another superb, verging on patently superb,  post from Wyatt Mason at Sentences. His has quickly become a favourite stop along the daily blogospheric milk run. Discharge from a Deeper Wound exhibits all I want to see in a blog post:

Establishment of anticipation/hints of potential contrition:

"Let’s not kid ourselves," I wrote a few years ago, "everyone hates translations. The evidence is everywhere in the history of literature:"

Outstanding quotation selection (added points because they’re metaphors): par example these bon mots from some of translation’s more illustrious, florid detractors

Cervantes wrote that reading a translation was "like looking at the Flanders tapestries from behind: although you can see the basic shapes, they are so filled with threads that you cannot fathom their original luster." Goethe took issue with translators themselves, whom he likened to "enthusiastic matchmakers singing the praises of some half-naked young beauty: they awaken in us an irresistible urge to see the real thing with our own eyes." Gide observed that the translator was "a horseman who tries to put his steed through paces for which it is not built." Madame de Lafayette equated the translator with "a lackey whose mistress sends him to pay someone a compliment; whatever she said politely, he renders rude."

Thought provocation:

"The trouble I have with this conventional wisdom is how patently it flies in the face of practical experience."

Thought

When I think about it, the most beautiful passages I’ve ever read have all been in translation: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Stendhal. I question whether or not they can be any more so in the original. Hard to imagine.

Recommended reading:

Adam Thirlwell. The Delighted States (FSG, 2008) "…it is the elusive nature of literary style-what it is, how it works, and why it survives translation-at the center of his perambulatory tour of the nature of the novel."

Useful link:

Walter Benjamin, "The Task of the Translator"

Critique.

"Though The Delighted States does not answer the question "What is Style?", it does pose the question with uncommon resourcefulness."

Motivation to post a response, and provide my own recommendation:

If you haven’t read Ben Yagoda’s book on style I commend it to you.

Promise of more of the same.  

What more can you ask for; this man gets the hang of it. He’s the real meal. A very impressive, quick study.

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