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Translations

Translating what one person says in the same language in which they said it can be difficult enough. One language to another can be very tricky; crossing languages with poetry can be outright criminal.

One of our favorites, Vladimir Nabokov, published a translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin into English in 1964 (later revised, 1975). The publication literally ended his long friendship with the great Edmund Wilson, who took the great novelist to task in the pages of the New York Review of Books, a deed Nabokov never forgave.

As great as such literary skirmishes can be (as well how far away they can seem, as though from a misty past on some faraway planet), the challenge itself of translation stands rude, even obdurate. Here is Nabokov’s translation of the first stanza of chapter one of Pushkin’s novel in verse, Onegin:

“My uncle has most honest principles:

when taken ill in earnest,

he has made one respect him

and nothing better could invent.

To others his example is a lesson;

but, good God, what a bore

to sit by a sick man both day and night,

without moving a step away!

What base perfidiousness

the half-alive one to amuse,

adjust for him the pillows,

sadly present the medicine,

sigh — and think inwardly

when will the devil take you?”

Now here’s another translation of the same section by Walter Arendt:

“Now that he is in grave condition,

My uncle, decorous old dunce,

Has won respectful recognition;

And done the perfect thing for once.

His action be a guide to others;

But what a bore, I ask you, brothers,

To tend a patient night and day

And venture not a step away:

Is there hypocracy more glaring

Than to amuse one all but dead,

Shake up the pillow for his head,

Dose him with melancholy bearing,

And think behind a public sigh:

‘Duce take you, step on it and die!'”

Words for thought, nourishment for the hungry. And you can still buy Nabokov’s translation. So take that, Mr. W.

Image: Portrait of Aleksander Pushkin by Orest Admovich Kiprensky. Oil on canvas, 1827.

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In A World

…that has a day on which there is an election

in which voters have been bombarded by nonsense

and limited in the number of their votes that will actually be cast

to decide whether a range of important problems will be addressed

and to determine whether crisis-level issues will even be acknowledged,

one woman man group of candidates voter can make all the difference.

That difference is the key, and that voter is you!

So get out there. Too many people have suffered, fought and died for this right for it to be allowed to lay fallow.

Washington isn’t the problem. The problem is the problem, and you can be part of the solution.

Yes, you can.

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Eco Hustle – climate change versus the recession

Sounds like a really long band name but no, it’s the gist of an Eco Hustle column from March 2011. From the archives of Flagpole and sadly, still relevant, to wit:

On the off chance that it is becoming possible to think about the climate crisis and our economic collapse as related events, consider the admonitions coming from the financial institutions, corporate media and political establishment of late. Is there any doubt that most of the talking heads on cable, along with an uncomfortable ratio of the professional politicians they report and comment on, do not know what they’re talking about when it comes to the causes for and ways out of our economic recession? Why does the picture seem so incomplete? What’s being left out of the discussion? Who, speaking through silence, bears the name of the one who signs the text?

Perhaps the most famous man to shed a tear in a television commercial was a Sicilian actor named Iron Eyes Cody. Dressed as a Native American of indeterminate tribal affiliation, he paddles a canoe through stagnate waters to a shore littered with all kinds of trash, smokestacks chugging away in the background, eventually arriving at a crowded highway. “Cannon” and “Bullwinkle” star William Conrad intones, “People start pollution. People can stop it.” The Keep America Beautiful ad left us with the salutary glimpse of the tear running down his face.

Maybe this very powerful ad seemed like a turning point when it aired in 1971, and maybe it was because we’ve been tacking the other way ever since. Instead of giving the crying Indian a reason to dry his eyes, we’ve spared no expense to design the perfect towelette to wipe his tear, while generally discouraging such public displays of disaffection. Rather than seeing it for what it was, this example is much more instructive in the service of what was to follow.

The reality show of the American energy future has continued apace, not unrelated to where we left the crying Indian with trash at his feet a few short years ago. Built on the distinct appeal of “tune in next week to see what happens,” it has evolved into an elimination of survivors where we’re making do with what’s left. Yet even as we’re all quite sure that cheap oil won’t last and that anthropogenic C02 emissions will alter the chemical equilibrium of the Earth, the pre-eminent question remains not how, but whether we will plan ahead.

We facilitate this down the line – from the shows we watch to the books we read to the politicians we elect. It’s pretty much an accepted fact that a singular hyperpower will eventually be ruled by an oligarchy. Pace Jefferson and Payne, no one knew how candid this transition might be under the direction of democratic capitalism. Corporatized masses looking to further their economic advantages any way possible foment a reality we are only on the lookout for more ways to showcase…

Read the whole thing, as the kids say.

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Fracking Shrugged

trekwtfIn a measure to counteract opposition to the practice of hydraulic fracturing to exploit oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania, an industry group is making an effort to reclaim the word, ‘fracking.’ I know:

“Fracking’s a good word,” says a middle-aged man collecting his mail. “Fracking’s a good word,” says a woman on her front porch. “Fracking rocks,” says a teenage girl on an elliptical machine.

The ad started running in late September, commissioned by the Marcellus Shale Coalition, the beginning of a larger campaign called “Rock solid for PA.”

“Some people will try to use that word in a negative connotation,” says the group’s president, David Spigelmyer. “All we’re trying to do is shine a light on the fact that there’s a lot of good that comes out of that technology. That’s all.”

David Masur has noticed the ads. He’s director of PennEnvironment, a non-profit that opposes fracking. “It’s been highly entertaining,” he says.

Combine that with this story of pinkwashing in the fracking industry and what you have is a nice bouquet of all the modern practices of poisoning layered atop the moral numbing of continual insults refined by public relations professionals.

 

 

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“Fanaticism Anxiety,” a vestige of the Colonial Era

The-Morocco-crisis_1911At Juan Cole’s Informed Comment, Edmund Burke III (!) on déjà vu all over again in the Middle East:

In 1900 media fulmination about the threat posed by alleged Muslim fanaticism dominated the headlines. Then as now, nineteenth century European tabloid railings against the Sudanese Mahdi and pan-Islamic conspiracies were a proven way to sell newspapers. Then as now, the lords of empire sought to spook metropolitan populations into supporting military interventions by manufacturing Muslim rebels. Then as now, this helped win continued public support for endless war and colonial expansion. Thus our current preoccupations with al-Qaida, Somali hijackers and ISIS fanatics, fit rather well in the museum of imperialist culture.

The French colonial experience provides a salient example. French Algeria was a veritable bestiary of what not to do, ranging from such Islamophobic policies of closing mosques, libraries and Islamic schools to demonizing sufi brotherhoods as the sources of alleged pan-Islamic insurgency. By 1900, French colonial experts and metropolitan officials had become convinced that a change was needed. They looked to the model of British India for an example of what worked, and to Morocco as the potential site where they could “get it right” by introducing the model of British India. But before they could do that, they first had to get acquiescence of the other European powers and contend with Moroccan resistance.

Still an independent state in 1900, Morocco was coveted by no less than four major European powers. Indeed, Europe would several times come to the brink of war in the period 1900-1912 over what was then called “the Moroccan Question.” In order to deploy the “scientific imperialism” tool kit, a systematic French effort to study Moroccan society and its culture and institutions was required. Yet as late as 1900, European ignorance about Morocco was profound.. Few studies existed, and those that did traded heavily in orientalist clichés. Morocco was viewed as a “Tibet on the doorstep of Europe.” And France was only slightly better informed about Morocco than its main rivals–Britain, Spain and Germany

What makes the Moroccan case so interesting is that the Moroccan colonial archive was created in the span of a single generation in the heyday of “scientific imperialism.” Thus from the start “Moroccan Islam” was intended to provide support for the French colonial project. In Morocco we get to see the elaboration of a colonial archive—a task that took a century for the British to accomplish in India. We also get to see the uses to which ethnographic knowledge was put in the elaboration of the colonial project. This story is the very opposite of the U.S. experience in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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National Day, Hong Kong edition

HongKongWe read, write and talk about how much giant corporations are willing to pay to support the fiction that climate change isn’t happening, so let’s not talk about it (because shut up!). Similarly, how long will the People’s Liberation Army put up with protests of this size? Tear gas and crowds that big are beginning to put them on front pages. Then what? Crackdown? Is that the game plan?

While many Hong Kong residents support the calls for greater democracy — dubbed the “umbrella revolution” by some, although the crowds’ demands fall far short of revolution — the unrest worries others.

“I strongly disagree with the protesters,” said an older woman who gave only her surname, Chan. “Those of us who came to the city 60 or 70 years ago had nothing and we worked and suffered so much to make Hong Kong the rich city it is today. And now the protesters have made our society unstable. For me, being able to eat and sleep is already a luxury. I don’t need democracy. What does it mean?”

Many younger Hong Kong residents raised in an era of plenty and with no experience of past political turmoil in mainland China have higher expectations. Under an agreement set in 1984, before most of them were born, Beijing promised to allow Hong Kong residents civil liberties unseen on the mainland after it took control of the city of 7.1 million in 1997.

The protesters are dismayed by China’s decision last month that candidates in the city’s first-ever election for its top leader must be hand-picked by a committee of mostly pro-Beijing tycoons. That move is viewed by many residents as reneging on promises to allow greater democracy in the semi-autonomous territory, since Beijing had promised that the chief executive would eventually be chosen through “universal suffrage.”

A promise since the time of the ‘handover’ was popular elections by 2017, and now that looks a little… different. Civil disobedience is unpredictable and that’s the last thing the Communist Communist Party wants. If anything is allowed to get out of hand in HK, look for similar kinds of demonstrations in the other megalopolises of the mainland. But a heavy-anded crackdown also seems unlikely. Watch the bond and stock markets teeter for a few days – they hate disorder, people, rights, democracy. It’s not what they’re about. Who has the upper hand, moving forward? How much can be paid to deny this is happening? Also, pay attention to which Westerners criticize the protesters and why.

Images: Christian Science Monitor, Wally Santana

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Anniversary of Emancipation

On this day in 1862, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Labor historian Erik Loomis at LGM details the reasons why it was considered a cowardly half-measure by some at the time, and also why it was political genius as well as morally correct:

On the other hand, African-Americans, north and south, knew what the war was about. While many in the North were trying to say it wasn’t about slavery per se, like southern whites, African-Americans never had any question of the stakes. Frederick Douglass and other northern black leaders urged Lincoln to immediately emancipate the slaves and organize black regiments for the Army. Perhaps more importantly, slaves themselves took advantage of nearby U.S. troops, fleeing to the military. Generals such as Benjamin Butler quickly recognized the potential of taking away the South’s labor force and turning that into a Union labor force. But Lincoln, nervous about the effects of making this an official policy on his plans to lure the South back into the Union, originally rejected the idea.

By mid 1862, Lincoln began to change his mind about the expediency of freeing slaves. The situation in the border states was more secure, with the ardent secessionists now significantly outnumbered by unionists. Congress pushed him on this, passing in March 1862 a law barring the military from returning escaped slaves to their owners. Still, Lincoln decided to avoid Congress and issue the proclamation as Commander in Chief, thus avoiding a tense debate and possible rejection. Lincoln wanted a major victory by Union forces before he issued it so it didn’t look desperate. Unfortunately, he had George McClellan as his commanding general, which meant that no major victories was likely. With the partial victory at Antietam a few days earlier as good as Lincoln was going to get, he decided this was the time.

There is a reason we revere certain people in our history, and not because of any one single thing they might have done. Any country is blessed to have individuals who can navigate conflicts with no obvious right answer or guaranteed outcome. Courage, sure. But also willingness to change one’s mind, an ability to see through perilous issues and steer clear of needlessly dramatic acts in favor of compromise, even and especially when it comes at a cost to your reputation and credibility. Lucky to have someone who could walk this minefield at that hour, even though we’re now mostly unable to appreciate the doubt and misgivings it took Lincoln to think he could preserve a union that was worth preserve. Without an elevated idea of his country and its countrymen, only lesser outcomes would have been imaginable.

Image: “Emancipation,” Thomas Nast lithograph, circa 1865, via Library of Congress.

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Eco Hustle – the Hustle Lives!

In 2008-9, I wrote a series of Columns for Flagpole magazine. The columns were titled Eco Hustle – What Green Means, and were a take off on this very blog from those years. Anyway, the columns had disappeared but are now back online, so I am going to re-publish them here. Thanks, Flagpole!

This is one of the early ones:

It’s a verb, it’s an adjective, it’s… green. But what does it mean? Before you can truly get hustled you need to be off your game, out of your element, down on your luck or stuffed with a false sense of security. From the looks of things, we seem to be many of these at once. Tighten up your laces: we’re going in.

Whether attending rock shows or major sporting events, we all seem to enjoy entering the biggest, fanciest stadiums around. So, just imagine that finding new energy sources while controlling carbon emissions is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. There; now pull out your circle and square diagrams, bell curves and line drawings, and let’s boil the whole system down to basics.

A system is an absolute human artifact, devised primarily for the sake of scientific conversation, though a lot of this we just don’t talk about. Systems are defined by their relationships to energy and matter crossing into them, and as such there are three types of systems: open, closed and isolated. Our bodies are open systems that exist within a closed system, the earth, and we’re constantly cycling material in and out of our systems. That material is made up of elements, basically identified in the periodic table, and they comprise living things like plants and animals or non-living matter like soil, rocks and the physical environment. But there is a fixed amount of material – its overall quantity never changes.

The earth is a closed system, where energy from the sun enters. Now, this is a tremendous energy input – more energy from the sun hits the earth during one hour than every man, woman and child on it could use in a year. There’s a strong case to be made that we should actually highlight the fundamental distinction between energy sources and energy storage. The sources are rather obvious (solar, tidal, geothermal) – what we keep looking for are the ancient energy storages hidden all over the planet (pockets of fossil fuels) so as to exploit nature’s geological-timescale labor.

Sustainability for earthlings therefore, be they Pakistani or Michigander, means living within the bounds of that solar input. Simply, if you outpace that input, you’re not sustainable.

The sustainability equation is all about…

More

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Climate change denial is a political strategy

NileBasinInitiativeThat it will come as news to exactly no one is not a reason that the disingenuous origins of climate change denial-ism should be woven into the general culture fabric. They do not belong, and they have nothing to do with climate change or science or Michael Mann, or hockey sticks, or warming/cooling trends. Denial-ism was a last gasp fruit from a poison tree that has achieved beyond Luntz’s wildest dreams. Who’s Luntz? This is Luntz:

a confidential party memo warned that it is the domestic issue on which George Bush is most vulnerable.

The memo, by the leading Republican consultant Frank Luntz, concedes the party has “lost the environmental communications battle” and urges its politicians to encourage the public in the view that there is no scientific consensus on the dangers of greenhouse gases.

“The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science,” Mr Luntz writes in the memo, obtained by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based campaigning organisation.

“Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly.

“Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”

The phrase “global warming” should be abandoned in favour of “climate change”, Mr Luntz says, and the party should describe its policies as “conservationist” instead of “environmentalist”, because “most people” think environmentalists are “extremists” who indulge in “some pretty bizarre behaviour… that turns off many voters”.

Words such as “common sense” should be used, with pro-business arguments avoided wherever possible.

Way to go, C-Plus. It is disgusting that so many people cop to this ‘controversy’ that never was, but that has so many plain consequences for them/us. There is no them, remember. Even these duplicitous charlatans are us.

Image: A river in Egypt

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Super statues

There’s so much awesome about this.

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Having recently visited the former East Germany and Prague, I can affirm that there is much weird remaining in the form of Communist-era buildings and monuments. For one thing, Prague still has Nazi and Communist numbering on buildings – and they’re still in use. Then you have this thing:

strahov

 

 

 

But really, nothing outdoes the creativity of re-painting statues as some kind of frozen justice league. And there’s plenty more where that came from. Take a swing through the former East bloc.