A quiet place.
The verb ‘to read’ does not tolerate the imperative, an aversion it shares with a few others: ‘to love’ … ‘to dream’ …
Like a Novel (originally Comme un roman), Daniel Pennac (my translation)
*****
I’ve read this book in French. On the back cover is a list of ten rights of a reader, which I found online in the printable form of an English language poster, and which I duly printed and stuck to the back of a particular door for everyone to read.
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
‘Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
*****
In my younger and more vulnerable years I went alone to see Robert Redford in The Great Gatsby. It was slow and misty but dramatic enough. I’ve never heard the song ‘What’ll I do?’ without returning in my mind to that movie theatre.
There was once a sly old fox with nine tails, who was very curious to know whether his wife was true to him: so he stretched himself out under a bench, and pretended to be dead as a mouse.
Mrs Fox, Brothers Grimm (Trans. unknown)
*****
I’m presently translating a few fairy tales and for inspiration have been going through a book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. When I read this opening line I laughed and read it again.
I’ve found another version of the story entitled How Mrs Fox Married Again, which gives more of a clue about the plot than the simpler Mrs Fox.
Illustration by Walter Crane, found in Project Gutenberg.
When Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams one morning, he found that he had been transformed in his bed into an enormous bug.
Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka (Trans. by Stanley Appelbaum)
*****
Sometimes I have to read a piece of literature in order to teach it. This one for example. I’d avoided Metamorphosis all my life until the day a student emailed to ask for help writing an essay on it. We agreed to meet a week later, to give me time to read it. Which I did, feeling again the long flying cockroaches of my childhood scratching their way across my bare feet or arms. At the end of the week I received another email from her, from the other side of the world. She had left the country, written her essay without my help, then emailed me to say ‘Forget it’. Too late, I’d read it, I’d squirmed my way to the end.
But one good thing came out of the exercise: I discovered its great opening line.
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 someone gently rapping – rapping at my chamber door.
The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe
*****
Today I’m working on a translation of a story in which a raven stands guard in a widow’s window, terrifying passers-by. As I search for the right words to interpret the story, the lines of Poe’s The Raven go round and round in my head.
Gustave Doré created the image in my header. It’s his interpretation of Poe’s lines.
This and more of Doré’s illustrations for The Raven are available here.
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
*****
Some books have a title that tempts me to turn to the blurb; this is one of them. And then, even better, it has this great opening line. So I began reading. About half-way through I put the book down. It lost me.
Define the colour red without using the words ‘colour’ or ‘red’ in your answer, and without making reference to any other colours.
The Life of Brian (Or Lack Thereof), Maree Spratt
*****
The first line stopped me momentarily from reading the second line. My mind filled with words in easy obedience to the command; red is my favourite.
I found it at the beginning of a short story in Award Winning Australian Writing 2009, a story I’ve used several times to provoke teenagers needing to write something creative. Brian, the protagonist, competes with contributors on Yahoo Answers, waking one morning to read this challenge.
The author, Maree Spratt, won a Young Writers Award for it; when I get my students to read this story out loud, they don’t have to act to get the tone right.
Header courtesy of http://nice-cool-pics.com/img-glamourous-red-apple-slices-4627.htm
There was once an art critic, I have been told, who had a sure way of identifying ancient Maltese art objects: he found himself crying before them.
Lest Innocent Blood be Shed, Philip Hallie
*****
The story of a village in the south of France, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, where every household and farm sheltered or hid refugees between 1941 and 1944, under penalty of death. In four years, thousands of Jewish refugees were saved; only nineteen were lost.
The woman carried the bag with the axe and maul and wedges; the man had the billy and clean tucker-bags; the cross-cut saw linked them.
Squeaker’s Mate, Barbara Baynton
*****
A late 19th-century Australian story about a tough pipe-smoking timber-getting woman whose back is broken when she is cutting down a tree. The man in her life, Squeaker, is good for nothing but she, his mate, has a dog who’s more useful…
Mother died today.
The Outsider, Albert Camus (trans. by Stuart Gilbert. Originally L’étranger)
*****
Yesterday (no. 14) I posted the first line from The Outsiders. With a final s. Different book, different author, but the same theme of a protagonist who feels like he’s outside of society. Like a misfit.
Today’s post is about The Outsider by Albert Camus. Thousands of words have been penned and keyed about his opening line. In French, it is ‘Aujourd’hui, maman est morte.’ Literally, ‘Today, Mum died.’ Three words that various translators render variously. Today, Mother died. Today, Mummy died. Today, my mother died. My mother died today. Mum died today. Mummy died today. Mama died today. Today, mum is dead. If it’s published in the US, Mum would be Mom.
The maman quandary was mine when I translated the short story Origami by Anne Bihan, in which a small girl refers to her mother as maman, French for Mum and Mummy. Since the girl is Japanese and the setting is Japan, I searched the web and happily found that some Japanese children are starting to use the European-sounding Mama, which I liked for my translation because of its similarity to Maman, and thought it good for retaining a closeness to the French. (I also liked Mama because one of my sons uses it when addressing me…) Of course, I put myself in the shoes of the little girl and remembered that I used to address my own mother as Mummy. But that doesn’t sound Japanese or French; it sounds English. Or Australian. Like me.
What about the actual Japanese word for Mum: Okaasan? There’s not really any question of using it; an English reader with no knowledge of Japanese would be lost. But did I want this child to sound Japanese or French or Australian? Well, Japanese. Ok, so I should write either Okaasan or Mama. Yet, as I wrote Mama Mama Mama, my life’s experience continually prompted me: as a child and then a mother, the word was Mummy (except for one son!). So, at first, I wrote Mummy, then read the story into a recorder and listened to the playback as objectively as possible. It didn’t sound Japanese or French. But does it have to? For me, for this story, it does. I changed it to Mama and read it again into the recorder, played it back and liked it for its Frenchness and modern Japaneseness. Mama it is.
A sidenote: I couldn’t have written this post, repeatedly typing ‘my mother died’, if my very own mother were alive! A second sidenote: On the day Mum died, I was doing some paid work for the French lecturer who had taught me Camus’ L’étranger, and I had to send him an email to say I needed time off for the funeral. I began the email, at first, with Aujourd’hui, maman est morte. Then I deleted it and wrote something less direct, less literary. Perhaps he thought of Camus, anyway.