An interesting article in its own right, but most striking for me for its first line.
That continuum of confidence, of retaining the foreign or arrogantly nativizing it, pretty much sums up large chunks of my life.
(via languagehat)
Čapek seems to be on hiatus until further notice. I've got other fires to tend.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Friday, May 08, 2009
Friday, May 01, 2009
Beyond The City
I say this from my own experience: the city is a bad place, unhealthy and entirely injurious to humanity. I do not even mean the dust, smoke, bad air and other horrible dangers to both health and morals that lie in wait for the man on the street. I mean the unhealthy and truly terrifying fact that the city-dweller cannot ordinarily see the moon and the stars. The true autochthon of the center of town cannot see the Big Dipper or Polaris on account of the streetlights; and because of the buildings no one knows whether the full or new moon is shining; even if they did know, to them it would be six of one and a half-dozen of the other.
Big Dipper, Vermont, June 2006
As far as the stars are concerned, their astral and planetary influence on human destiny is strongly in doubt, and as far as the influence of the moon is concerned, educated people only recognize its important to the extent of the tides, the palolo worm,1 the growth of certain plants and bacteria, and perhaps also on sleepwalkers, poets, lovers and cats. I, however, am not concerning myself with these effects; I am concerned with the fact that if a denizen of the streets lifts his eyes from the ground, he cannot see the twinkling of the stars in the sky, and cannot see the face of the moon. If goes out on the threshold of his building, he does not even meet his nearest neighbors Venus or Jupiter. He is not permitted to direct his steps by the moon. He doesn’t even know if the night sky is black or white. He lives in a starless cavern like an olm,2 but he does not realize it. The olm probably does not realize it either.
The man on the streets lives in the city, and sometimes in a very large one, but he does not live in the universe, for he does not live under the stars. He lives among a million people, but not among a million stars. His world ends in Vysočany or Bubeneč3 instead of ending at Arcturus or the Milky Way; it’s really quite a small little world, for it does not go on into infinity. It doesn’t even matter if you study the star charts or can differentiate Altair from Albireo;4 it is more important to just be able to convince yourself whenever you want that the stars are still up there and that the cosmos exists. The man on the street has to go all the way out to Zbraslav5 to spot the universe; but the man at the periphery is in the universe as soon as he stands at his own door and looks up. If people met at night under the stars instead of under lamps, I think that they would not be easily able to talk about politics or the terrible state of things; it’s easier to talk of love, of the next day, and of other quiet and serious things under the stars. Under the stars you can go crazy or fall in love, but you can’t get really aggravated. Secret astral influences do exist; the stars have a powerful influence on a person who looks at them, but they have no influence on someone who reads the glowing advertisements for the Lyon Works6or reads theater reviews at lunch. A man under the stars is a participant in the grandiose glory of the world; he is crowned by those stars themselves.
The effect of the moon is more profound. I don’t even mean the splendor of the moonlit night, the supernatural beauty of the Ottoman crescent, or the silver palaces on the moon7; I have the lunar phases and quarters in mind. A man who lives in the street conducts himself by the calendar; he knows it is the first or the fifteenth or the seventeenth, by which he is fatigued by everything brought to him by the merry-go-round of time. His time is not sacredly and lightly inscribed in the phases of the moon. His life is not divided into heavenly quarters, and does not consist of light and dark periods. When he pays his rent on the first it is no eternal recurrence of time as it is when the moon is full. The time between two full moons is more profound and solemn than the time which comes between the first and the last. Time for a man of the city is a mere date, is it just a number and in no way a heavenly phenomenon; it does not come from eternity, which is the time of the universe. A man who sees the face of the moon lives not by the ticking clock on the wall, but by the secretive timepieces of the planets; consequently he measures time, by very long feet, if I may say so.8
The last time I moved I intended to move alone to a wild and abandoned part of the city, but instead I found that I had moved much farther away: out to the moon and to the vicinity of the stars.
1926
______
1 ["The worm lives in the shallow waters in the coral reefs. During its main breeding season , which occurs on the second or third day after the third quarter of the moon in October or November, the worms produce segments which are engorged with sperm or eggs . These segments break off at sunrise, rise to the surface, and release their gametes into the sea . The local villagers and fishermen collect these segments in large quantities as it is a popular delicacy. The gelatinous mass of worms is baked or fried and then eaten." (courtesy here. Mmmm. "Mblalolo" in the original, which is fascinating to me, as it does not seem like a permissible syllable onset a Malayo-Polynesian language. [EDIT: Fijian has a prenasalized "mb" permissible as an onset; not sure about the "l," though.]
2 [The olm. Sure, I could have said "salamander, but it's actually a close translation, and of course, I love little words I rarely see used.]
3 [Both of these are districts of Prague, recently added (1/1/1922) as of the time of the writing, and therefore suitably remote.]
4 [A suburb of Prague at the time. I think Čapek would find it funny that it is now one of the outermost districts of Prague itself, the city proper having grown significantly since the 1920s.]
5 Arcturus--the clear, reddish star in the constellation of Boötes, hurtling through the cosmic abyss at a speed of 500,000 kilometers per hour [see, the real footnotes are just as ridiculous as mine--Andrew]; Altair--one of the stars in the summer constellation of the Eagle; Albireo--the name of the topaz yellow and sapphire-blue double star forming the southern end of the Swan or the Northern Cross, one of the three significant constellations of the summer sky.
6 A former silk merchant on Železná Street in Prague [Thank God for these footnotes, because if this needed to be explained to citizens of Prague in the 1920s, I and Google couldn't do a thing about it]
7 [The original says "Ottoman half-moon," and I love Čapek too much for a [sic], but am also too pedantic not to point that out. I have no idea what he means by "silver palaces," that's for sure.]
8 [Originally "by very long ells/elbows," the word for the unit of measure "ell" being exactly the same as the part of the body, instead of just being etymologically related as in English.]
As far as the stars are concerned, their astral and planetary influence on human destiny is strongly in doubt, and as far as the influence of the moon is concerned, educated people only recognize its important to the extent of the tides, the palolo worm,1 the growth of certain plants and bacteria, and perhaps also on sleepwalkers, poets, lovers and cats. I, however, am not concerning myself with these effects; I am concerned with the fact that if a denizen of the streets lifts his eyes from the ground, he cannot see the twinkling of the stars in the sky, and cannot see the face of the moon. If goes out on the threshold of his building, he does not even meet his nearest neighbors Venus or Jupiter. He is not permitted to direct his steps by the moon. He doesn’t even know if the night sky is black or white. He lives in a starless cavern like an olm,2 but he does not realize it. The olm probably does not realize it either.
The man on the streets lives in the city, and sometimes in a very large one, but he does not live in the universe, for he does not live under the stars. He lives among a million people, but not among a million stars. His world ends in Vysočany or Bubeneč3 instead of ending at Arcturus or the Milky Way; it’s really quite a small little world, for it does not go on into infinity. It doesn’t even matter if you study the star charts or can differentiate Altair from Albireo;4 it is more important to just be able to convince yourself whenever you want that the stars are still up there and that the cosmos exists. The man on the street has to go all the way out to Zbraslav5 to spot the universe; but the man at the periphery is in the universe as soon as he stands at his own door and looks up. If people met at night under the stars instead of under lamps, I think that they would not be easily able to talk about politics or the terrible state of things; it’s easier to talk of love, of the next day, and of other quiet and serious things under the stars. Under the stars you can go crazy or fall in love, but you can’t get really aggravated. Secret astral influences do exist; the stars have a powerful influence on a person who looks at them, but they have no influence on someone who reads the glowing advertisements for the Lyon Works6or reads theater reviews at lunch. A man under the stars is a participant in the grandiose glory of the world; he is crowned by those stars themselves.
The effect of the moon is more profound. I don’t even mean the splendor of the moonlit night, the supernatural beauty of the Ottoman crescent, or the silver palaces on the moon7; I have the lunar phases and quarters in mind. A man who lives in the street conducts himself by the calendar; he knows it is the first or the fifteenth or the seventeenth, by which he is fatigued by everything brought to him by the merry-go-round of time. His time is not sacredly and lightly inscribed in the phases of the moon. His life is not divided into heavenly quarters, and does not consist of light and dark periods. When he pays his rent on the first it is no eternal recurrence of time as it is when the moon is full. The time between two full moons is more profound and solemn than the time which comes between the first and the last. Time for a man of the city is a mere date, is it just a number and in no way a heavenly phenomenon; it does not come from eternity, which is the time of the universe. A man who sees the face of the moon lives not by the ticking clock on the wall, but by the secretive timepieces of the planets; consequently he measures time, by very long feet, if I may say so.8
The last time I moved I intended to move alone to a wild and abandoned part of the city, but instead I found that I had moved much farther away: out to the moon and to the vicinity of the stars.
1926
______
1 ["The worm lives in the shallow waters in the coral reefs. During its main breeding season , which occurs on the second or third day after the third quarter of the moon in October or November, the worms produce segments which are engorged with sperm or eggs . These segments break off at sunrise, rise to the surface, and release their gametes into the sea . The local villagers and fishermen collect these segments in large quantities as it is a popular delicacy. The gelatinous mass of worms is baked or fried and then eaten." (courtesy here. Mmmm. "Mblalolo" in the original, which is fascinating to me, as it does not seem like a permissible syllable onset a Malayo-Polynesian language. [EDIT: Fijian has a prenasalized "mb" permissible as an onset; not sure about the "l," though.]
2 [The olm. Sure, I could have said "salamander, but it's actually a close translation, and of course, I love little words I rarely see used.]
3 [Both of these are districts of Prague, recently added (1/1/1922) as of the time of the writing, and therefore suitably remote.]
4 [A suburb of Prague at the time. I think Čapek would find it funny that it is now one of the outermost districts of Prague itself, the city proper having grown significantly since the 1920s.]
5 Arcturus--the clear, reddish star in the constellation of Boötes, hurtling through the cosmic abyss at a speed of 500,000 kilometers per hour [see, the real footnotes are just as ridiculous as mine--Andrew]; Altair--one of the stars in the summer constellation of the Eagle; Albireo--the name of the topaz yellow and sapphire-blue double star forming the southern end of the Swan or the Northern Cross, one of the three significant constellations of the summer sky.
6 A former silk merchant on Železná Street in Prague [Thank God for these footnotes, because if this needed to be explained to citizens of Prague in the 1920s, I and Google couldn't do a thing about it]
7 [The original says "Ottoman half-moon," and I love Čapek too much for a [sic], but am also too pedantic not to point that out. I have no idea what he means by "silver palaces," that's for sure.]
8 [Originally "by very long ells/elbows," the word for the unit of measure "ell" being exactly the same as the part of the body, instead of just being etymologically related as in English.]
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
How Houses Smell
I don’t mean any consecrated odor, steam from the washing or even the stink of the kids’ diapers. I live in a young neighborhood which is growing with the ringing of hammers, the clatter of scaffolding and the strokes of the carpenter’s axes, and if you bound my eyes and led me through the city I would know my way by smells: there is an old street, those are new buildings, still partly uninhabited, there is an unsold house, while the foundation on that house is caving in. For the building smells of the man, gives our the odor of the matter from which it has arisen, and it takes decades before odors settle, and the dry, dusty stink of accidents hang in the air.
At first it reeks of barren earth; the cold, damp, sepulchral breath of the bedrock below wafts up from the dug foundations. But there are already piles of bricks set up around, and well-baked bricks have an odor almost like that of bread; the dry oven sighs out of them, and the hot, mealy dust drifts off of them. Then the slaked lime blows in, which stings the eyes and sticks in the throat, and there is also the cold, raw smell of the mortar, which hangs coarse and close. The smell of new construction is cold and raw like the air in a cave, and campfires and good lamps will be needed to make this into a dwelling.
Then the boards go up and the scaffolding rises, to let the wall-builders up and to change the smell, for the odor of wood is solid and good; wood smells of home, of ripeness, and its pitchy, sunny exhalations cover the lime reek of the plaster and the muddy smell of concrete. And let us not forget the sourish stench of iron, girders, pipes, and wires, together with the oily fetor of lacquer; or even the smoky reek of charcoal smoke used to cure the walls. And here we have the rank and file of carpenters and joiners as they raise the timbers, lay the floors and install the windows and doors; wood prevails and its resinous, balsamic odor drifts out of the clangorous construction. To that are added the smells of turpentine, varnish and oils, the stink of coats of wallpaper pastes and paint. And finally the well-scrubbed building sighs lightly and smells of soap like a boy fresh out of the bath on Sunday; the cool emptiness and strange hollowness of new construction exhales out the open windows.
And a new building does not lose its own odor right away; just as new clothes smell of the textile factory and new shoes of the tannery, the house smells for a long while of the building site. Sir, it is a lng time before people feel at home in it; the building yet hems them in like some temporary enclosure, not yet grown around them like the shell on a small, it comes out strongly here and overpowers over there like new clothes. It must be extinguished somewhat to render it fit for people; you could say it must ripen for a few years. It only becomes a full, real house when it stops being a new building; then it becomes not just the work of the builders, but also of the people who live in it. From the laundry in the cellar to the smoking chimney it sings of humanity and warmth, until one day when men come with picks and shovels, and it smells, for one last time, of the grist mill, the meal, ripeness and its own special desiccation, reminiscent of the scent of hay and rotting wood.
1933
______
At first it reeks of barren earth; the cold, damp, sepulchral breath of the bedrock below wafts up from the dug foundations. But there are already piles of bricks set up around, and well-baked bricks have an odor almost like that of bread; the dry oven sighs out of them, and the hot, mealy dust drifts off of them. Then the slaked lime blows in, which stings the eyes and sticks in the throat, and there is also the cold, raw smell of the mortar, which hangs coarse and close. The smell of new construction is cold and raw like the air in a cave, and campfires and good lamps will be needed to make this into a dwelling.
Then the boards go up and the scaffolding rises, to let the wall-builders up and to change the smell, for the odor of wood is solid and good; wood smells of home, of ripeness, and its pitchy, sunny exhalations cover the lime reek of the plaster and the muddy smell of concrete. And let us not forget the sourish stench of iron, girders, pipes, and wires, together with the oily fetor of lacquer; or even the smoky reek of charcoal smoke used to cure the walls. And here we have the rank and file of carpenters and joiners as they raise the timbers, lay the floors and install the windows and doors; wood prevails and its resinous, balsamic odor drifts out of the clangorous construction. To that are added the smells of turpentine, varnish and oils, the stink of coats of wallpaper pastes and paint. And finally the well-scrubbed building sighs lightly and smells of soap like a boy fresh out of the bath on Sunday; the cool emptiness and strange hollowness of new construction exhales out the open windows.
And a new building does not lose its own odor right away; just as new clothes smell of the textile factory and new shoes of the tannery, the house smells for a long while of the building site. Sir, it is a lng time before people feel at home in it; the building yet hems them in like some temporary enclosure, not yet grown around them like the shell on a small, it comes out strongly here and overpowers over there like new clothes. It must be extinguished somewhat to render it fit for people; you could say it must ripen for a few years. It only becomes a full, real house when it stops being a new building; then it becomes not just the work of the builders, but also of the people who live in it. From the laundry in the cellar to the smoking chimney it sings of humanity and warmth, until one day when men come with picks and shovels, and it smells, for one last time, of the grist mill, the meal, ripeness and its own special desiccation, reminiscent of the scent of hay and rotting wood.
1933
______
Friday, April 24, 2009
It bears repeating, but the Čapek I'm posting? I'm pretty sure you're the first people to read it in English. Ever. Same as last year.
So too, with this Fuks I've just started the second draft of.
______
"It was long ago, very long ago, when I sent a letter from Prague to Daniel Potocky, lover of food and drink, to make time on Saturday and Sunday and come out to see me at my cottage. I wrote the letter with deliberate ambiguity, and yet urgently, closing with the remark that he certainly would not regret coming. And I sketched out a little map of how to get there once he got off the highway at Benešov.
I imagined he would brag about it to Jána, who was his intellectual superior many times over, and he did. She called me at the neighbors’ cabin, for they had a telephone. I didn’t even have electricity there, relying on flashlights and oil lamps for light.
“He was excited,” Jána divulged to me, “to see what I would make of it. Why he was invited. I told him it seemed like you were preparing a feast—you know how he likes to eat—and that you wanted him there for mysterious reasons.”
Jána had never studied psychology; she was a chemist at the medical examiner’s office, but she had always had interesting insights into people’s personalities. What she had told Potocky about my letter seemed wise.
That memorable June Saturday was unusually hot and humid, as were the days preceding it. People complained of the humidity and torpor, the swimming pool was full of people, and they had even started to run out of beer and soft drinks. “If only it would rain a little,” people said, looking longingly at the sky whenever it started to cloud over. But no rain came. I had no beer or soft drinks at the cabin, just ordinary water, ten bottles of wine, two bottles of Greek cognac, a bottle of middling whisky and an exceptional banana schnapps. I also had three bottles of vodka, four tins of tomato juice and plenty of pepper. “If I mix him drinks,” I thought that Saturday, “he’ll be done. Sooner than I want, and I can’t have that today. He’ll just drink wine, which he can easily stand.” Before his arrival I looked over the glassware and the things for dinner. Then I went into the attic of the cottage, where I had a sort of study, which contained a low round table and a comfortable armchair, and I readied the pistol.
______
There's your hook. Unfortunately ninety-eight percent of it still only exists in my handwriting. If you liked it, ask me where I am with it round the summer solstice.
So too, with this Fuks I've just started the second draft of.
______
"It was long ago, very long ago, when I sent a letter from Prague to Daniel Potocky, lover of food and drink, to make time on Saturday and Sunday and come out to see me at my cottage. I wrote the letter with deliberate ambiguity, and yet urgently, closing with the remark that he certainly would not regret coming. And I sketched out a little map of how to get there once he got off the highway at Benešov.
I imagined he would brag about it to Jána, who was his intellectual superior many times over, and he did. She called me at the neighbors’ cabin, for they had a telephone. I didn’t even have electricity there, relying on flashlights and oil lamps for light.
“He was excited,” Jána divulged to me, “to see what I would make of it. Why he was invited. I told him it seemed like you were preparing a feast—you know how he likes to eat—and that you wanted him there for mysterious reasons.”
Jána had never studied psychology; she was a chemist at the medical examiner’s office, but she had always had interesting insights into people’s personalities. What she had told Potocky about my letter seemed wise.
That memorable June Saturday was unusually hot and humid, as were the days preceding it. People complained of the humidity and torpor, the swimming pool was full of people, and they had even started to run out of beer and soft drinks. “If only it would rain a little,” people said, looking longingly at the sky whenever it started to cloud over. But no rain came. I had no beer or soft drinks at the cabin, just ordinary water, ten bottles of wine, two bottles of Greek cognac, a bottle of middling whisky and an exceptional banana schnapps. I also had three bottles of vodka, four tins of tomato juice and plenty of pepper. “If I mix him drinks,” I thought that Saturday, “he’ll be done. Sooner than I want, and I can’t have that today. He’ll just drink wine, which he can easily stand.” Before his arrival I looked over the glassware and the things for dinner. Then I went into the attic of the cottage, where I had a sort of study, which contained a low round table and a comfortable armchair, and I readied the pistol.
______
There's your hook. Unfortunately ninety-eight percent of it still only exists in my handwriting. If you liked it, ask me where I am with it round the summer solstice.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
The Painting of Martin Blaskowitz has a first draft. I first put pen to paper on June 4, 2008, almost eleven months ago.
It took longer than the first book I did, which is probably as it should be.
"And I don't know what I'm feeling right now, but it's intense. I just walked around the block without really registering it. My hands were shaking, and an eye was twitching a few pages from the finish. It's...man. I won't be at all surprised if no one has the same experience reading it, thinks it's ho-hum or predictable or whatever...but still. I took that text word by word, and performed some act on each of those components, and then wrote it all down. I owned it...but it's doing a good job of owning me."
I wrote that three and a half years ago and five or six projects ago.
I owned this one too, and they all do a good job of owning me. I need a nap.
It took longer than the first book I did, which is probably as it should be.
"And I don't know what I'm feeling right now, but it's intense. I just walked around the block without really registering it. My hands were shaking, and an eye was twitching a few pages from the finish. It's...man. I won't be at all surprised if no one has the same experience reading it, thinks it's ho-hum or predictable or whatever...but still. I took that text word by word, and performed some act on each of those components, and then wrote it all down. I owned it...but it's doing a good job of owning me."
I wrote that three and a half years ago and five or six projects ago.
I owned this one too, and they all do a good job of owning me. I need a nap.
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