larvatus prodeo
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Below are the 30 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Michael Zeleny" journal:[<< Previous 30 entries]
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05:54 pm
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to bourbaki or not to bourbaki?
Denken Sie an die Schlacht an der Lisaine!
Tags: birthday, french, german, mathematics, persiflage
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02:34 am
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old klingon proverb
Gottes Mühlen mahlen langsam, mahlen aber trefflich klein;
Ob auß Langmuth er sich seumet, bringt mit Schärff er alles ein.
—Friedrich von Logau, „Göttliche Rache“, Sinngedichte III, ii, 24, circa 1654
Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Retribution”, Poems, Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co., 1869, Vol. I, p. 292
ὀψέ θεῶν ἀλέουσι μύλοι, ἀλέουσι δὲ λεπτά
—Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos I, 287 ≈ Oracula Sibyllina VIII, 14 ≈ Plutarch, Moralia, “De sera numinis vindicta” 549d
Quid mihi si fueras miseros laesurus amores,
Foedera per divos, clam violanda, dabas?
A miser, et siquis primo periuria celat,
Sera tamen tacitis Poena venit pedibus.
—Tibullus, Elegiae I, ix, 1-4 and commentary
dixerat, et tandem cunctante modestior ira
ille refert: ‘equidem non uos ad moenia Thebes
rebar et hostiles huc aduenisse cateruas.
pergite in excidium socii, si tanta uoluptas,
sanguinis, imbuite arma domi, atque haec inrita dudum
templa Iouis (quid enim haud licitum?) ferat impius ignis,
si uilem, tanti premerent cum pectora luctus,
in famulam ius esse ratus dominoque ducique.
sed uidet haec, uidet ille deum regnator, et ausis,
sera quidem, manet ira tamen.’ sic fatus, et arces
respicit.
—Statius, Thebaid V 680-690
ut sit magna, tamen certe lenta ira deorum est
—Juvenal, Satura XIII 100
Itaque dii pedes lanatos habent, quia nos religiosi non sumus.
—Petronius, Satyricon XLIV,18
Et dum pro se quisque deos tandem esse et non neglegere humana fremunt et superbiae crudelitatique etsi seras, non leues tamen uenire poenas—prouocare qui prouocationem sustulisset, et implorare praesidium populi qui omnia iura populi obtrisset, rapique in uincla egentem iure libertatis qui liberum corpus in seruitutem addixisset,—ipsius Appi inter contionis murmur fidem populi Romani implorantis uox audiebatur.
—And while the people muttered, each man to himself, that there were gods after all, who did not neglect the affairs of men; and that pride and cruelty were receiving their punishment, which though late was nevertheless not light—that he was appealing who had nullified appeal; that he was imploring the protection of the people who had trodden all the rights of the people under foot; that he was being carried off to prison, deprived of his right to liberty, who had condemned the person of a free citizen to slavery—the voice of Appius himself was heard amidst the murmurs of the assembly, beseeching the Roman People to protect him.
—Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 3, 56, 7, translated by Benjamin Oliver Foster
La parole des dieux n’est point vaine et trompeuse ;
Leurs desseins sont couverts d’une nuit ténébreuse ;
La peine suit le crime : elle arrive à pas lents.
—Voltaire, Oreste, I, ii
Courage, if carried to daring, leads to death; courage, if not carried to daring, leads to life. Either of these two things is sometimes beneficial, sometimes harmful.“Why ’t is by heaven rejected,
Who has the reason detected?” Therefore the holy man also regards it as difficult.
The Heavenly Reason strives not, but it is sure to conquer. It speaks not, but it is sure to respond. It summons not, but it comes of itself. It works patiently but is sure in its designs.
Heaven’s net is vast, so vast. It is wide-meshed, but it loses nothing.
—Lao-Tze’s Tao-Teh-King, translated by Paul Carus, 73, “Daring To Act”
Tags: chinese, classics, french, german, greek, justice, latin, revenge
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05:25 am
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in memoriam
John Singer Sargent, Gassed, 1919, Imperial War Museum, London
Dulce et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
—Wilfred Owen
(18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918)
The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen
edited by Edmund Blunden
New Directions, 1965, p. 55
Henri de Groux, Masques à gaz, etching,
Royal Army and Military History Museum, Brussels
REPRODUCED FROM ART OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
LA NUIT D’AVRIL 1915
À L. de C.-C.
Le ciel est étoilé par les obus des Boches
La forêt merveilleuse où je vis donne un bal
La mitrailleuse joue un air à triples-croches
Mais avez-vous le mot
Eh ! oui le mot fatal
Aux créneaux Aux créneaux Laissez là les pioches
Comme un astre éperdu qui cherche ses saisons
Cœur obus éclaté tu sifflais ta romance
Et tes mille soleils ont vidé les caissons
Que les dieux de mes yeux remplissent en silence
Nous vous aimons ô vie et nous vous agaçons
Les obus miaulaient un amour à mourir
Un amour qui se meurt est plus doux que les autres
Ton souffle nage au fleuve où le sang va tarir
Les obus miaulaient
Entends chanter les nôtres
Pourpre amour salué par ceux qui vont périr
Le printemps tout mouillé la veilleuse l’attaque
Il pleut mon âme il pleut mais il pleut des yeux morts
Ulysse que de jours pour rentrer dans Ithaque
Couche-toi sur la paille et songe un beau remords
Qui pur effet de l’art soit aphrodisiaque
Mais
orgues
aux fétus de la paille où tu dors
L’hymne de l’avenir est paradisiaque
—Guillaume Apollinaire
(26 août 1880 – 9 novembre 1918)
Œuvres poétiques
édition établie et annotée par Marcel Adéma
Gallimard, 1965, pp. 243-244
Guillaume Apollinaire, 1916
кавалерист Моисей Исаакович Зелёный (1889-1934)
пехотинец Иосиф Моисеевич Зелёный (1920-2000)
артиллерист Исаак Моисеевич Зелёный (1923-2004)
Tags: apollinaire, death, french, memory, violence, war
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10:43 pm
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founts of inspiration
Stendhal + Antoine Berthet = Le Rouge et le Noir
Flaubert + Delphine Couturier = Madame Bovary
T. Coraghessan Boyle + Roger Dier = Thirteen Hundred Rats
Tags: animals, french, gerbil-clap, literature, stupidity
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01:36 am
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you may come to something
Russian metablog realdiary quotes an anonymous translation of a journal record by Jules Renard dated 23 November 1888. ( Read more... ) Despite all his doubts, Renard has amounted to something. So may you.
Tags: french, mallarmé, russian
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12:48 pm
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200
Bon bicentenaire et vive Gérard de Nerval !
Tags: birthday, french, poetry
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09:34 pm
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on y va
African stories follow a standard pattern which dictates that the attention of the listeners must be held. At no time must boredom set in. One must play with the listeners’ emotions as one does with a toy doll. Make them laugh, make them cry, make them angry, thwart their expectations, puzzle them one moment, delight them, or repel them, the next. And always leave them with wide open mouths, begging for more.
—Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa, Indaba, My Children: African Folktales, Grove Press, 1999, p. 529
You’re violating the first rule of being Steve. — Who? — Learn to eliminate your desire. […]
This takes us to the second rule of being Steve. You have to do something excellent in her presence, thus demonstrating your sexual worthiness. […]
That takes us to part three of the Tao of Steve. After you’ve eliminated your desire, and after you’ve been excellent in her presence, then you must retreat, okay? […]
I made a cheat sheet so I wouldn’t forget. “Be desireless, be excellent, and be gone.”
—The Tao of Steve
Edmond Haraucourt : « Partir, c’est mourir un peu. »
Louis Tiercelin : « Mourir, c’est partir un peu. »
Alphonse Allais : « Mourir, c’est partir beaucoup. »
Jacques Prévert : « Martyr, c’est pourrir un peu. »
Tags: french, persiflage, sex
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12:22 am
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one philosopher, four languages, seven translations
Aristotle, Poetics, in Greek, Russian, English, and French.
Tags: aristotle, french, greek, philosophy, russian, translation
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08:57 am
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la barbichette
Je te tiens, tu me tiens, par la barbichette;
Le premier qui rira, aura une tapette!
Et puis, et puis encore ?
Tags: bullshit, french, movies, stupidity, video, violence
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07:18 am
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toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite
Et voici maintenant un autre exemple : je suis chez le coiffeur, on me tend un numéro de Paris-Match. Sur la couverture, un jeune nègre vêtu d’un uniforme français fait le salut militaire, les yeux levés, fixés sans doute sur un pli du drapeau tricolore. Cela, c’est le sens de l’image. Mais naïfs ou pas, je vois bien ce qu’elle me signifie : que la France est un grand Empire, que tous ses fils, sans distinction de couleur, servent fidèlement sous son drapeau, et qu’il n’est de meilleure réponse aux détracteurs d’un colonialisme prétendu, que le zèle de ce noir à servir ses prétendus oppresseurs.
—Roland Barthes, « Le Mythe aujourd’hui », Mythologies, Paris: Seuil, 1970, p. 201 |
And here is now another example: I am at the hairdresser, someone hands me an issue of Paris-Match. On the cover, a young Negro in a French army uniform is saluting, his eyes uplifted, doubtless fixed on a fold of the Tricolor. That is the meaning of the image. But naively or not, I clearly understand what it signifies to me: that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, regardless of color, faithfully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism, than the zeal of this black man to serve his alleged oppressors.
― translated by MZ |
 
Жиды советской власти
Tags: bullshit, empire, french, jews, politics, russian
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09:34 pm
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la rochefoucauld 1-50
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MAXIME. Jamais neuve mais toujours consolante.
MAXIM. Never new but always consoling.
МАКСИМА. Никогда не нова но всегда утешительна.
— Gustave Flaubert, Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues |
This publication inaugurates the translation of the maxims of François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld in their final and definitive edition of 1678. It will reproduce the text according to the 1967 Garnier publication, juxtaposed with its maximally faithful rendering into English and Russian. The ensuing triangulation is meant to enable the bilingual reader to overcome the hesitation imposed by the literary form of these moral precepts, penetrating their philosophical content. To this end, the translations are biased towards literal accuracy, to serve their purpose through simultaneous reference to the original text.
Alongside with the fragmentary thoughts of Pascal, published posthumously in 1670, the maxims of La Rochefoucauld, polished and arranged over a decade, enter the canon of Western philosophy as seminal corpora. The arrival of these texts in the wake of inauguration of philosophical modernity by Descartes, complements his revolution in metaphysics and epistemology, with the first significant contribution to the understanding of emotions since the classical antiquity. The lapidary form of the moral maxim is an essential complement to Socratic dialectic that refers to its digested origins in the fragmentary remains of Milesians, Ionians, Pythagoreans, and Eleatics. No better pedigree could be wished for in accounting for a literary genre within philosophical disciplines.
The final edition will incorporate critical and analytic supplements built upon the tables and commentaries supplied by the author and his contemporaries, and aiming to account for three centuries of plaudits and rebuttals. All readers of this draft are invited to contribute by commenting on the texts and their translations.
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François de La Rochefoucauld, Réflexions ou Sentences et Maximes morales, édition de 1678 |
François de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections or Sentences and Moral Maxims, edition of 1678 |
Франсуа де Ла Рошфуко, Размышления или Предложения и Моральные Максимы, издание 1678 года |
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Nos vertus ne sont, le plus souvent, que des vices déguisés. |
Our virtues, more often than not, are but disguised vices. |
Наши добродетели — это чаще всего не что иное как замаскированные пороки. |
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Ce que nous prenons pour des vertus n’est souvent qu’un assemblage de diverses actions et de divers intérêts, que la fortune ou notre industrie savent arranger; et ce n’est pas toujours par valeur et par chasteté que les hommes sont vaillants, et que les femmes sont chastes. |
What we take for virtues is often but a collection of diverse acts and diverse interests, which fortune or our ingenuity arrange together; and it is not always through valor or through chastity that men are brave, and that women are chaste. |
То, что мы принимаем за добродетели, нередко оказывается сочетанием разнообразных действий и разнообразных выгод, искусно подобранных судьбой или нашей сноровкой; так не всегда благодаря доблести и целомудрию мужчины бывают доблестны, а женщины целомудренны. |
( Read more... )
Crossposted to ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) larvatus, ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) old_french_lit, philosophy, and ru_translate.
Tags: french, philosophy, rhetoric
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02:22 pm
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the woman poet
Je me suis toujours plu à chercher dans la nature extérieure et visible des exemples et des métaphores qui me servissent à caractériser les jouissances et les impressions d’un ordre spirituel. Je rêve à ce que me faisait éprouver la poésie de Mme Valmore quand je la parcourus avec ces yeux de l’adolescence qui sont, chez les hommes nerveux, à la fois si ardents et si clairvoyants. Cette poésie m’apparaît comme un jardin ; mais ce n’est pas la solennité grandiose de Versailles ; ce n’est pas non plus le pittoresque vaste et théâtral de la savante Italie, qui connaît si bien l’art d’édifier des jardins (aedificat hortos) ; pas même, non, pas même la Vallée des Flûtes ou le Ténare de notre vieux Jean-Paul. C’est un simple jardin anglais, romantique et romanesque. Des massifs de fleurs y représentent les abondantes expressions du sentiment. Des étangs, limpides et immobiles, qui réfléchissent toutes choses s’appuyant à l’envers sur la voûte renversée des cieux, figurent la profonde résignation toute parsemée de souvenirs. Rien ne manque à ce charmant jardin d’un autre âge, ni quelques ruines gothiques se cachant dans un lieu agreste, ni le mausolée inconnu qui, au détour d’une allée, surprend notre âme et lui recommande de penser à l’éternité. Des allées sinueuses et ombragées aboutissent à des horizons subits. Ainsi la pensée du poète, après avoir suivi de capricieux méandres, débouche sur les vastes perspectives du passé ou de l’avenir ; mais ces ciels sont trop vastes pour être généralement purs, et la température du climat trop chaude pour n’y pas amasser des orages. Le promeneur, en contemplant ces étendues voilées de deuil, sent monter à ses yeux les pleurs de l’hystérie, hysterical tears. Les fleurs se penchent vaincues, et les oiseaux ne parlent qu’à voix basse. Après un éclair précurseur, un coup de tonnerre a retenti : c’est l’explosion lyrique ; enfin un déluge inévitable de larmes rend à toutes ces choses, prostrées, souffrantes et découragées, la fraîcheur et la solidité d’une nouvelle jeunesse !
― Charles Baudelaire, Sur mes contemporains : M. Desbordes-Valmore, OC II, pp. 148-149 |
I always took pleasure in seeking in external and visible nature, examples and metaphors that helped me to characterize the pleasures and the impressions of a spiritual order. I dream of that, which the poetry of Mme Valmore made me feel when I traversed it with these eyes of adolescence that are, in nervous men, at once so ardent and so clear-sighted. This poetry presents itself to me as a garden; but it is not the imposing solemnity of Versailles; neither is it the vast and theatrical picturesque of learned Italy, who knows so well the art of edifying gardens (aedificat hortos); not even, not, not even the Valley of the Flutes or Tænarum of good old Jean-Paul. It is a simple English garden, romantic and novelistic. Flowerbeds represent therein the abundant expressions of sentiment. Ponds, limpid and motionless, which reflect all things resting upon the overturned vault of the skies, represent deep resignation all strewn with memories. Nothing is lacking in this charming garden of a past age, neither some Gothic ruins hiding in a rural spot, nor the unknown mausoleum that, at the turning of a pathway, surprises your soul and instructs it to think of eternity. Sinuous and shaded pathways end in sudden horizons. Thus the poet’s thought, having followed capricious meanders, emerges into vast perspectives of the past or the future; but these skies are too vast to be completely unclouded, and the temperature of those climes too warm to forestall the buildup of storms. The stroller, in contemplating these expanses veiled in mourning, feels his eyes well up with the tears of hysteria, hysterical tears. The flowers lean over in defeat, and the birds speak only in low voice. After a precursory flash, a thunderclap resounded: it is the lyric explosion; at last an inevitable flood of tears returns to all these prostrate, suffering, and discouraged things, the freshness and the solidity of a new youth!
― translated by MZ |
Tags: baudelaire, french, poetry, translation
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11:11 pm
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4. terror and virtue
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Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as ‘right’ in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as ‘brute force.’ This replacement of the power of the individual by the power of a community constitutes the decisive step of civilization.
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In 1905, at the height of his renown as the creator of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud published a deceptively slight volume on the clandestine nature of jokes. According to Freud, jokes employ the methods of condensation, displacement, and indirect representation through allusion, absurdity, and substitution of trivialities for matters of profound importance, in the service of man’s repressed instinctual nature, epitomized in the instincts of sex and aggression. These instincts serve as the wellspring of all wit. In civilized society, they seldom wield direct influence over human affairs. Only owing to a momentary suspension of salubrious repressions that constrain them in the service of the super-ego, do sexuality and aggression enter into collective consciousness. Thus jokes enable the brief pleasure in discharging the energy of the anticathexis responsible for maintaining these repressions.
The nature of this discharge is best illuminated by example:[1]
| Itzig ist zur Artillerie eingeteilt worden. Er ist offenbar ein intelligenter Bursche, aber ungeschickt und ohne Interesse für den Dienst. Einer seiner Vorgesetzten, der ihm wohlgesinnt ist, nimmt ihn beiseite und sagt ihm: «Itzig, du taugst nicht bei uns. Ich will dir einen Rat geben: Kauf dir eine Kanone und mach dichselbständig.» |
Itzig has been declared fit for service in the artillery. He was clearly an intelligent lad, but intractable and without any interest in the service. One of his superior officers, who was friendlily disposed to him, took him on one side and said to him: “Itzig, you’re no use to us. I’ll give you a piece of advice: buy yourself a cannon and make yourself independent!” |
Freud goes to some trouble to explain the joke. The advice, says he, is obvious nonsense. Cannons are not to be bought and an individual cannot make himself independent as a military unit — set himself up in business, as it were. But in so far as the advice is not mere nonsense, but a joking nonsense, it merits scrutiny of the means whereby the nonsense is turned into a joke. And here Freud infers that “[t]he officer who gives Artilleryman Itzig this nonsensical advice is only making himself out stupid to show Itzig how stupidly he himself is behaving. He is copying Itzig: ‘I’ll give you some advice that’s as stupid as you are.’ He enters into Itzig stupidity and makes it clear to him by taking it as the basis of a suggestion which would fit in with Itzig wishes: if Itzig possessed a cannon of his own and carried out military duties on his own account, how useful his ambition and intelligence would be to him! In what good order he would keep his cannon and how familiar he would make himself with its mechanism so as to meet the competition of the other possessors of cannons!”
In this hasty reading, Freud seems disingenuous in decrying Itzig’s stupidity. After all, his underachieving artillerist hero, denied the opportunity to make a snappy comeback, shares his name with the quick-witted protagonist of Freud’s favorite joke: “Itzig, wohin reit’st Du?” “Weiss ich, frag das Pferd.” That other Itzig has no idea where he is riding to. All interested parties should ask the horse. In a hallowed equation, his self-deprecation compensates for his complacency. As an admirer of this tranquil rider, the physician who built his worldview on a painstaking investigation of ostensible coincidences is unlikely to have overlooked this instance of homonymy. The implication of Freud planting his tongue in cheek is borne out by the fact that the butts of each joke derive their shared name from an aphaeresis omitting the first letter of the German word Witzig, witty or jocular.[2] Through the silence of its protagonist, the joke evinces an elusive quality that resists interpretative closure, suggesting great deeds to come from this intelligent but intractable Jewish underachiever. Be it real or feigned, Freud’s confidence in the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force already rang hollow upon publication in 1905. The reluctant artillerist had come into his own. His self-employment inaugurated a new stage in democratic pluralism. No longer will this plebe be meekly carried along by the steed of History. ( Read more... )
Crossposted to larvatus, real_philosophy, and history in commemoration of Sigmund Freud’s sesquicentennial.
Tags: anarchism, french, freud, history, jews, nobel, philosophy, politics, robespierre, russian, terrorism, violence
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04:58 pm
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without a dog
« Sa non-autonomie assumée fait du chien l’être le plus parfait de la création, avec quelques femmes très soumises. … Y a pas que les chiens. Les femmes aussi, c’est gentil. »
— Michel Houellebecq
As every schoolchild knows, Aristotle’s Rhetoric is a compendium of examples illustrating general principles. In the Rhetoric 2.24, at 1401a22, within his discussion of homonymy or equivocation, Aristotle says that to be without a dog is most dishonorable: ( Read more... )
Crossposted to larvatus, linguaphiles, philosophy, ancient_philo, and classicalgreek.
Tags: aristotle, diogenes, french, houellebecq, sex
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10:20 am
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happy centenary, samuel
Le Concentrisme
Monsieur
Vous êtes le premier à vous intéresser à cet imbécile. Voici tout ce que j’en sais : j’ai fait sa connaissance ou, plus exactement, il m’a imposé cette incommodité, la veille de sa mort, à Marseille. Il s’est cramponné à moi dans un sombre bistrot où, à cette époque, j’avais l’excellente habitude d’aller me soûler deux fois par semaine. « Vous avez l’air » me dit-il « suffisamment idiot pour m’inspirer une confiance extrême. Enfin » poursuivit-il — (je ne change rien à ses logogriphes) — « enfin et pour la première fois je tombe sur un animal qui, si j’ose en croire mes yeux, est totalement et idéalement dépourvu d’intelligence, plongé dans une divine et parfaite nullité. » Il s’interrompit, se découvrit, et puis, d’une voix vibrante : « Je vous embrasse, mon frère ! » s’écria-t-il. Je le repoussai vivement. Il faillit tomber, pâlit, et se mit à tousser d’une façon si douloureuse que je ne pus m’empêcher de regretter la violence de mon geste. Mais il se reprit bientôt et m’adressa de nouveau, maintenant d’une voix à peine perceptible.
« Monsieur » dit-il, « permettez-vous que je vous pose une question ? » ( Read more... ) Gnome
Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.
— written after Samuel Beckett’s resignation from Trinity College; published in the Dublin Magazine IX 3 (July-September 1934); reproduced from Samuel Beckett, Collected Poems in English & French, Grove Press, 1977, p. 7 ( Read more... ) Dotage
When your mind’s no longer flowing
Through the conduits of knowing,
Train yourself to forgo fretting
Over things not worth forgetting.
—MZ, 13 April 2006, 10:20 PST |
Tags: beckett, comedy, doggerel, dotage, french, translation
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04:16 pm
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a middle-aged male defilement fantasy
 Herewith more proof of seminal, howsoever clandestine and unacknowledged, influence of Jews on Russian culture. Максим Лебедев (maxim_lebedev) refers us to Сосачки, a hit track by Нежное Это (i_mel). It amounts to a Russian rendering of the 1966 duet by France Gall and Serge Gainsbourg, Les sucettes, a sentimental favorite of ugly logorrhoeic middle-aged Israelites addicted to corrupting teenage gentile maidens, or vice versa: ( Read more... )
Tags: french, jews, sex, vanity
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09:24 am
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homage to a government
Homage to a Government
Next year we are to bring all the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.
It’s hard to say who wanted it to happen,
But now it’s been decided nobody minds.
The places are a long way off, not here,
Which is all right, and from what we hear
The soldiers there only made trouble happen.
Next year we shall be easier in our minds.
Next year we shall be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it’s a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money.
— Philip Larkin Thus Charles Baudelaire paid his homage to the joy of martial obedience in Le peintre de la vie moderne: ( Read more... )
Tags: baudelaire, french, larkin, poetry, politics, translation
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12:34 pm
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no ptyx
― for Eric Gans
 In 1887, Stéphane Mallarmé published a sonnet composed in the form of an allegory of itself. Its outer parts, the first quatrain and the second tercet, comprised a frame that contained the inner parts, the second quatrain and the first tercet. Their relation represented the way whereby the literal subject matter of the poem, a window reflected in the mirror in a darkened room, contained the nighttime sky. To complicate his task further, the poet chose to alternate in the quatrains the masculine rhymes in ‘ix’ and ‘yx’ that ended with a consonant, with feminine rhymes in ‘ore’ that ended in a silent e, inverting their genders to feminine ‘ixe’ and ‘yxe’ alternated with masculine ‘or’ in the tercets. The French vocabulary is ill suited to supplying rhymes in ‘ix/yx’. In response to this deficiency, Mallarmé invested the word ptyx with a novel meaning. His usage seemed at first a hapax legomenon within French literature, a term thitherto unexpressed in its language. But in ancient and modern Greek, πτύξ stood for a layer, a plate, a fold, or a writing tablet. In particular, it designated a special kind of a fold, such as may be found in a seashell. In fact, Victor Hugo already had drawn his inspiration from this term to employ Ptyx as a proper name in La Légende des siècles. Mallarmé had something very different in mind. His ptyx was not any given being, place, or thing, but a special kind of object. Its very nature inhered in its absence:
Ses purs ongles très haut dédiant leur onyx,
L’Angoisse, ce minuit, soutient, lampadophore,
Maint rêve vespéral brûlé par le Phénix
Que ne recueille pas de cinéraire amphore |
Her pure nails sprung up exalting their onyx,
Anxiety, this midnight, bearing light, sustains,
In twilight many dreams burnt up by the Phoenix
Whose smoky ashes no sepulchral urn contains |
Sur les crédences, au salon vide : nul ptyx
Aboli bibelot d’inanité sonore,
(Car le Maître est allé puiser des pleurs au Styx
Avec ce seul objet dont le Néant s’honore.) |
Atop the sideboards, in the empty room: no ptyx,
That voided toy of vibrant nonsense, left inside,
(Because the Master’s gone to draw the tears from Styx
With that exclusive object wherein Naught takes pride.) |
Mais proche la croisée au nord vacante, un or
Agonise selon peut-être le décor
Des licornes ruant du feu contre une nixe, |
In vacant north seen through the casement frames, a gold
May agonize at times, within the setting, to behold
Fire-breathing unicorns arrayed against a nix, |
Elle, défunte nue en le miroir, encor
Que, dans l’oubli fermé par le cadre, se fixe
De scintillations sitôt le septuor. |
She, lifeless naked mirror image, repetition
Whom in the twinkling framed forgetting, is to fix
Through sparkling timed in septet, composition. |
| ― Stéphane Mallarmé, Œuvres complètes, édition présentée, établie et annotée par Bertrand Marchal, tome I, Gallimard: Bibliothéque de la Pléiade, 1998 (MOC I), pp. 37-38, cf. p. 98 |
― translated by MZ |
 ( Read more... )
Tags: french, mallarmé, poetry, translation
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04:08 pm
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concerning the lives of stéphane mallarmé on and off the isle of ptyx
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Il n’existe que trois êtres respectables :
Le prêtre, le guerrier, le poète. Savoir, tuer et créer.
Les autres hommes sont taillables et corvéables, faits pour l’écurie, c’est-à-dire pour exercer ce qu’on appelle des professions.
— Charles Baudelaire, Mon cœur mis à nu
There exist but three respectable beings:
The priest, the warrior, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.
The rest of men belong to the fatigue party, made for the stables, in other words for the practice of that, which is called professions.
— Charles Baudelaire, My heart laid bare[0] |
Stéphane Mallarmé began his career in nearly devotional emulation of the ill-fated cultivator of les fleurs du mal. Notwithstanding the affinities of his ethos, his destiny was to differ in one significant regard. Or so he insisted in a letter to his friend Henri Cazalis, written in October of 1862:[1] ( Read more... )
Tags: baudelaire, french, huysmans, jarry, mallarmé, translation, valéry
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03:18 am
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isolation
« En amour, la seule victoire, c’est la fuite. »
― Napoléon Bonaparte
Pendant la première partie de sa vie, on ne se rend compte de son bonheur qu’après l’avoir perdu. Puis vient un âge, un âge second, où l’on sait déjà, au moment où l’on commence à vivre un bonheur, que l’on va, au bout du compte, le perdre. Lorsque je rencontrai Belle, je compris que je venais d’entrer dans cet âge second. Je compris également que je n’avais pas atteint l’âge tiers, celui de la vieillesse véritable, où l’anticipation de la perte du bonheur empêche même de le vivre.
― Michel Houellebecq, La possibilité d’une île, Fayard, 2005, p. 173; voir aussi l’entretien du 25 août 2005 et La fracture Houellebecq de 27 octobre 2005, publiés dans Le Nouvel Observateur |
During the first part of his life, one becomes aware of his happiness only after having lost it. Then comes an age, a second age, when one already knows, as soon as he starts to live in happiness, that he is going to end up losing it. When I met Belle, I understood that I had just entered this second age. I also understood that I had not reached the third age, that of true infirmity, when the anticipation of losing happiness altogether prevents one from living it.
― translated by MZ |
Rembrandt van Rijn, Susanna and the Elders, 1647, Mahogany, 76.6 x 92.7 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin ( Read more... )
Tags: french, houellebecq, love, translation
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05:38 am
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12. role models
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ecce respondeo dicenti, ‘quid faciebat deus antequam faceret caelum et terram?’ respondeo non illud quod quidam respondisse perhibetur, ioculariter eludens quaestionis violentiam: ‘alta,’ inquit, ‘scrutantibus gehennas parabat.’ aliud est videre, aliud ridere: haec non respondeo.
— Aurelius Augustinus, Confessiones
See, I answer him that asketh, “What did God before He made heaven and earth?” I answer not as one is said to have done merrily (eluding the pressure of the question), “He was preparing hell (saith he) for pryers into mysteries.” It is one thing to answer enquiries, another to make sport of enquirers. So I answer not.
— Augustine of Hippo, Confessions |
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La Fontaine, entendant plaindre le sort des damnés au milieu du feu de l’Enfer, dit : « Je me flatte qu’ils s’y accoutument, et qu’à la fin, ils sont là comme le poisson dans l’eau. »
— Chamfort, Maximes et Pensées, Caractères et Anecdotes
La Fontaine, hearing complaints of the lot of the damned in the midst of hellfire, said: “I trust that they get accustomed to it, and that in the end, they rest there as fish in water.”
— Chamfort, Maxims and Thoughts, Characters and Anecdotes |
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FEU. Purifie tout. — Quand on entend crier « au feu », on doit commencer par perdre la tête.
— Gustave Flaubert, Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues
FIRE. Purifies everything. — Upon hearing the cry of “Fire!”, one must begin by losing his head.
— Gustave Flaubert, Dictionary of Received Ideas |
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Il y a du Dante, en effet, dans l’auteur des Fleurs du Mal, mais c’est du Dante d’une époque déchue, c’est du Dante athée et moderne, du Dante venu après Voltaire, dans un temps qui n’aura point de saint Thomas.
There is Dante, in effect, in the author of the Flowers of Evil, but it is a Dante of the fallen era, an atheistic and modern Dante, a Dante who comes after Voltaire, in a time that will have no saint Thomas.
— Jules Barbey D’Aurevilly, Les Poètes[0] |
1978 years ago, Jesus welcomed all men to partake of his company:[1]
| Δεῦτε πρός με πάντες οἱ κοπιῶντες καὶ πεφορτισμένοι, κἀγὼ ἀναπαύσω ὑμᾶς. |
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. |
His words are echoed and amplified through our God-fearing land. The authority of the Son of God is buttressed by the all too human urge to connect with a role model of one’s choosing. ( Read more... )
Crossposted to larvatus, about_poetry, philosophy, and real_philosophy.
Tags: aquinas, aristotle, baudelaire, dante, french, jesus, milton, plato, shakespeare, soteriology, spinoza
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03:09 pm
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family values II
― for Victor Yodaiken
ἔτι καὶ αἱ παροιμίαι, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, μαρτύριά εἰσιν, οἷον εἴ τις συμβουλεύει μὴ ποιεῖσθαι φίλον γέροντα, τούτῳ μαρτυρεῖ ἡ παροιμία, μήποτ' εὖ ἔρδειν γέροντα.
― Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1376a |
Further, proverbs, as stated, are evidence; for instance, if one man advises another not to make a friend of an old man, he can appeal to the proverb, Never do good to an old man.
― translated by J. H. Freese |
 ( Read more... )
Tags: aristotle, bullshit, french, friends, houellebecq, translation
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02:15 pm
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the ethos of translation I
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Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore —
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door —
Only this, and nothing more.” |
Une fois, sur le minuit lugubre, pendant que je méditais, faible et fatigué, sur maint précieux et curieux volume d’une doctrine oubliée, pendant que je donnais de la tête, presque assoupi, soudain il se fit un tapotement, comme de quelqu’un frappant doucement, frappant à la porte de ma chambre. « C’est quelque visiteur, — murmurai-je, — qui frappe à la porte de ma chambre ; ce n’est que cela et rien de plus. » |
Une fois, par un minuit lugubre, tandis que je m’appesantissais, faible et fatigué, sur maint curieux et bizarre volume de savoir oublié, — tandis que je dodelinais la tête, somnolant presque, soudain se fit un heurt, comme de quelqu’un frappant doucement, frappant à la porte de ma chambre, — cela seul et rien de plus. |
( Read more... )
Tags: baudelaire, french, mallarmé, poe, translation
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01:44 pm
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les petits maîtres
― à Eric Gans
petit-maître
Vieilli, littéraire. Jeune élégant, jeune élégante aux allures et aux manières affectées et prétentieuses.
Pluriel : des petits-maîtres, des petites-maîtresses. ( Read more... )
Tags: baudelaire, french, language, mallarmé, sex, translation
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08:55 am
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say what?
― for David W. Affeld
“Art must be despised and considered to be completely worthless before anything can be derived from it again, or else it must be applied to everything. It is therefore ridiculous to try for any kind of personal success.”
« Quand j’aurai inspiré le dégoût et l’horreur universels, j’aurai conquis la solitude. »
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“Once I have inspired universal disgust and horror, I will have conquered solitude.”
― translated by MZ |
« Ma carrière n'avait pas été un échec, commercialement tout du moins : si l’on agresse le monde avec une violence suffisante, il finit par le cracher, son sale fric ; mais jamais, jamais il ne vous redonne la joie. »
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“My career had not been a failure, at least commercially: if you assail the world with sufficient violence, it ends up spewing its filthy lucre; but never, never does it give you back any joy.”
― translated by MZ |
( Read more... )
Tags: baudelaire, comedy, corbière, doggerel, french, houellebecq, poetry, traducement
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03:24 am
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des esseintes
| Afin de jouir d’une oeuvre qui joignît, suivant ses voeux, à un style incisif, une analyse pénétrante et féline, il lui fallait arriver au maître de l’Induction, à ce profond et étrange Edgar Poe, pour lequel, depuis le temps qu’il le relisait sa dilection n’avait pu déchoir. |
To enjoy a literary work that adjoined, according to his wishes, to an incisive style, a penetrating and feline analysis, he had to get to the master of Induction, that profound and strange Edgar Poe, for whom, since the moment when he started re-reading him, his devotion could not have declined. |
( Read more... )
Tags: baudelaire, french, huysmans, poe, translation
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05:42 am
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franco-american prophecy
| Le monde va finir. La seule raison pour laquelle il pourrait durer, c’est qu’il existe. Que cette raison est faible, comparée à toutes celles qui annoncent le contraire, particulièrement à celle-ci : qu’est-ce que le monde a désormais à faire sous le ciel ? — Car, en supposant qu’il continuât à exister matériellement, serait-ce une existence digne de ce nom et du dictionnaire historique ? Je ne dis pas que le monde se réduit aux expédients et au désordre bouffon des républiques du Sud-Amérique, que peut-être même nous retournerons à l’état sauvage et que nous irons, à travers les ruines herbues de notre civilisation, chercher notre pâture, un fusil à la main. Non ; — car ce sort et ces aventures supposeraient encore une certaine énergie vitale, écho des premiers âges. Nouvel exemple et nouvelles victimes des inexplorables lois morales, nous périrons par où nous avons cru vivre. La mécanique nous aura tellement américanisés, le progrès aura si bien atrophié en nous toute la partie spirituelle, que rien parmi les rêveries sanguinaires, sacrilèges, ou anti-naturelles des utopistes ne pourra être comparé à ses résultats positifs. Je demande à tout homme qui pense de me montrer ce qui subsiste de la vie. De la religion, je crois inutile d’en parler et d’en chercher les restes, puisque se donner encore la peine de nier Dieu est le seul scandale en pareilles matières. La propriété avait disparu virtuellement avec la suppression du droit d’aînesse ; mais le temps viendra où l’humanité, comme un ogre vengeur, arrachera leur dernier morceau à ceux qui croiront avoir hérité légitimement des révolutions. Encore, là ne serait pas le mal suprême. |
The world is going to end. The only reason for which it could last, is that it exists. This reason is feeble, compared to all those that announce the opposite, particularly to this one: what does the world have from now on to do under the sky? — Because, supposing that it should continue to exist materially, would that be an existence worthy of its name and a historical dictionary? I do not say that the world reduces itself to the expedients and the farcical disorder of the republics of South America, that perhaps we shall even revert to savagery and that we shall proceed, across the grassy ruins of our civilization, to seek our grazing ground, rifle in hand. No — because this fate and these adventures would still presuppose a certain vital energy, echo of the first ages. New example and new victims of the unexplorable moral laws, we shall perish by what we had believed to live. Mechanics will have Americanized us so much, progress will have so thoroughly atrophied in us all our spiritual faculties, that nothing among the sanguinary, sacrilegious, or anti-natural daydreams of the utopians could be compared with its positive results. I ask any thinking man to show me what remains of life. Concerning religion, I believe that it is useless to speak and to seek its remains, since to go to the trouble of once again denying God is the only scandal in such matters. Property had virtually disappeared with the suppression of the right of primogeniture; but the time will come when humanity, like a vengeful ogre, will extract its remainder from those who will believe themselves to have legitimately inherited from the revolutions. Still, that would not be the supreme evil. |
( Read more... )
Tags: baudelaire, french, politics, translation
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07:00 am
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11. endgame
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Le dernier acte est sanglant, quelque belle que soit la comédie en tout le reste : on jette enfin de la terre sur la tête, et en voilà pour jamais.
— Blaise Pascal, Pensées |
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The final act is bloody, howsoever fine all the rest of the play: in the end they throw some earth over our head, and thus therewith forever.
— Blaise Pascal, Pensées |
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Toute plaisanterie dans un homme mourant est hors de sa place ; si elle roule sur de certains chapitres, elle est funeste. C’est une extrême misère que de donner à ses dépens à ceux que l’on laisse le plaisir d’un bon mot.
— Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères |
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Any joke made by a dying man is out of place; if it turns on certain subjects, it is dreadful. It is a wretched thing, to give the pleasure of a witticism, at one’s own expense, to those one leaves behind.
— Jean de La Bruyère, The Characters |
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Le soleil ni la mort ne se peuvent regarder fixement.
— François de La Rochefoucauld, Maximes |
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Neither the sun nor death can be looked upon steadily.
— François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims[0] |
In 1862, the year that followed the glory of the second edition of Les Fleurs du mal with the farce of his failed attempt to gain election to the French Academy, Baudelaire saw his friend and publisher Auguste Poulet-Malassis declared bankrupt. The poet was heavily invested in this failure. His finances collapsed. At that time, he began another journal, which he entitled Hygiène:[1]
| Plus on veut, mieux on veut. |
The more you will, the better you will. |
Plus on travaille, mieux on travaille et plus on veut travailler. Plus on produit, plus on devient fécond.
Après une débauche, on se sent toujours plus seul, plus abandonné. |
The more you work, the better you work and the more you want to work. The more you produce, the more fertile you become.
After debauchery, you always feel more alone, more abandoned. |
Au moral comme au physique, j’ai toujours eu la sensation du gouffre, non seulement du gouffre du sommeil, mais du gouffre de l’action, du rêve, du souvenir, du désir, du regret, du remords, du beau, du nombre, etc.
J’ai cultivé mon hystérie avec jouissance et terreur. Maintenant, j’ai toujours le vertige, et aujourd’hui, 23 janvier 1862, j’ai subi un singulier avertissement, j’ai senti passer sur moi le vent de l’aile de l’imbécillité.[2] |
Morally, as physically, I always had the feeling of the abyss, not only of the abyss of sleep, but of the abyss of action, of dream, of memory, of desire, of regret, of remorse, of beauty, of number, etc.
I have cultivated my hysteria with delight and terror. Now, I always have vertigo, and today, January 23, 1862, I underwent a singular warning, I felt passing over me the wind of the wing of imbecillity. |
 The revulsion of flesh, the withdrawal from its touch, avowed by this man of the crowd, finds its complement in the transposition of a hoary sexual cliché into the realm of productive labor:It’s a commonplace observation but true just the same ― the more you fuck, the more you want to fuck, and the better you do fuck! When you overdo it your cock seems to get more flexible: it hangs limp, but on the alert, as it were. You only have to brush your hand over your fly and it responds. For days you can walk around with a rubber truncheon dangling between your legs. Women seem to sense it, too.
― Henry Miller, Sexus[3] But the discipline of creative work failed to accrue though fatigue party practice in the way of the young man’s well honed aptitude for debauchery. Baudelaire fantasized about fleeing to Honfleur, into his mother’s care, responsible for the production of his greatest poems five years earlier. He practiced the prescription of Pascal’s Wager, praying to the dead dearest to him. Prayer was unavailing. ( Read more... )
Tags: baudelaire, death, french, translation
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11:21 pm
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10. survivor of suicide
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Le suicide est le plus grand des crimes. Quel courage peut avoir celui qui tremble devant un revers de fortune ? Le véritable héroïsme consiste à être supérieur aux maux de la vie.
— Napoléon I, Maximes de guerre et pensées
Suicide is the greatest of crimes. What courage could possess he who trembles before a reversal of fortune? True heroism consists in being above the ills of life.
— Napoleon I, Maxims of War and Thoughts |
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L’orgueil est toujours plus près du suicide que du repentir.
— Antoine de Rivarol, Maximes, pensées et paradoxes
Pride is always closer to suicide than to repentance.
— Antoine de Rivarol, Maxims, thoughts, and Paradoxes |
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On a, relativement à la gravité du sujet, écrit très peu sur le suicide, on ne l’a pas observé. Peut-être cette maladie est-elle inobservable. Le suicide est l’effet d’un sentiment que nous nommerons, si vous voulez, l’estime de soi-même, pour ne pas le confondre avec le mot honneur. Le jour où l’homme se méprise, le jour où il se voit méprisé, le moment où la réalité de la vie est en désaccord avec ses espérances, il se tue et rend ainsi hommage à la société devant laquelle il ne veut pas rester déshabillé de ses vertus ou de sa splendeur. Quoi qu’on en dise, parmi les athées (il faut excepter le chrétien du suicide), les lâches seuls acceptent une vie déshonorée. Le suicide est de trois natures : il y a d’abord le suicide qui n’est que le dernier accès d’une longue maladie et qui certes appartient à la pathologie ; puis le suicide par désespoir, enfin le suicide par raisonnement. Lucien voulait se tuer par désespoir et par raisonnement, les deux suicides dont on peut revenir ; car il n’y a d’irrévocable que le suicide pathologique : mais souvent les trois causes se réunissent, comme chez Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
— Honoré de Balzac, Illusions perdues
Considering the gravity of the subject, very little has been written about suicide; it has not been studied. Perhaps this malady cannot be studied. Suicide results from a feeling that if you like we will call self-esteem, so as not to confuse it with the word “honor”. The day when a man despises himself, the day when he sees himself despised, the moment when the reality of life is at odds with his hopes, he kills himself and thus pays homage to society, before which he does not wish to stand stripped of his virtues or his splendor. Whatever one may say of it, among atheists (exception must be made for the Christian suicide) cowards alone accept a life dishonored. There are three kinds of suicide: firstly the kind that is but the final bout of a prolonged sickness, and which surely belongs to the domain of pathology; secondly the suicide arrived at through despair; thirdly the suicide arrived at through reasoning. Lucien wanted to kill himself through despair and through reasoning, the two kinds of suicide from which one may retreat; for the only irrevocable kind is the pathological suicide; but often the three causes come together, as in the case of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
— Honoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions |
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SUICIDE. Preuve de lâcheté.
— Gustave Flaubert, Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues
SUICIDE. Proof of cowardice.
— Gustave Flaubert, Dictionary of Received Ideas[0] |
Born on 9 April 1821, Charles Baudelaire made several attempts on his life before realizing himself as a poet. At the age of 24, he sent his mistress Jeanne Duval with a letter to the court-appointed guardian of his paternal inheritance:[1]
Je me tue ― sans chagrin. ― Je n’éprouve aucune de ces perturbations que les hommes appellent chagrin. ― Mes dettes n’ont jamais été un chagrin. Rien n’est plus facile que de dominer ces choses-là. Je me tue parce que je ne puis plus vivre, que la fatigue de m’endormir et la fatigue de me réveiller me sont insupportables. Je me tue parce que je suis inutile aux autres ― et dangereux à moi-même. Je me tue, parce que je me crois immortel et que j’espère.
― Lettre à Narcisse Ancelle, Paris, le 30 juin 1845 |
I kill myself ― without sorrow. ― I feel none of those disturbances that men call sorrow. ― My debts never have been a sorrow. Nothing is easier than mastering these things. I kill myself because I could no longer live, because the weariness of falling asleep and the weariness of awakening are unbearable to me. I kill myself because I am useless to others ― and dangerous to myself. I kill myself, because I believe myself to be immortal and because I hope.
― Letter to Narcisse Ancelle, Paris, 30 June 1845 |
As with every other melodramatic gesture commemorated in the poet’s correspondence, the suicide attempt resonated with concern among his intimates, without realizing the threatened consequence in its author’s life. Its concerns recur, in the images of death and decay, self-loathing and self-immolation, which play a crucial part in his art.[2] ( Read more... )
Tags: baudelaire, french, poetry, suicide, translation
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06:30 pm
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3. principles and circumstances
The revolutionary fevers of 1848 redefined the identities of European powers for generations to come. Their germs came from France. The first banners of rebellion arose in the cause of universal suffrage. The end of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars in 1814, with its tragic aftermath at Waterloo in 1815, ushered in the reactionary restoration of the Bourbon dynasty in the person of Louis XVIII. This new King of France was a brother of Louis XVI, guillotined during the revolution. The key to his fate was forged by Talleyrand. That shadowy architect of French polity, who in 1796 had consigned it to Napoléon’s Brumaire coup d’état, endured to rescue it in 1814 from humiliation by its victors at the Congress of Vienna.  ( Read more... )
Tags: anarchism, balzac, baudelaire, french, politics, talleyrand, translation, violence
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