infinite research

I've been assigned an essay on the "infinite library," based on an answer to an interview question I was given at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. So I'm rereading Borges's story, "The Library of Babel," and lo and behold, last night very serendipitously found a book on Étienne-Louis Boullée, the pre- and during French Revolution architect, who almost designed the Bibliothèque Nationale, or national library for France. Here's his design for the library, which like many of his designs, is classicism on an impossible scale.

Anyway, the book. I found it last night in the rare book room of the Strand, which itself is almost an infinite library--this quality of infiniteness granted by the complete hodge-podgery of its selection. Ashbery leans against an 1880s tome on quiltmaking (well, not quite--the A Nest of Ninnies was leaning against something completely discordant, but it I don't remember what it was. Something like quiltmaking.); Walter Mosley printer proofs against the Japanese Country House, and so on and so on. And then there are long, long shelves with books that "have not been priced yet" and probably never will. I sat with my son Ismael in a huge old leather chair and let my eyes run over the shelves as I fed him: shiny spines next to leather, beat-up paperbacks next to boxed oversized art books, and perched on piles of "not priced yet" goodies, some tiny book, I recall on typesetting (should've taken it...). Oh, but I'm digressing--back to the book on Boullée! It's by one Helen Rosenau and the text is impressively uninspired, dull almost to the same degree that Boullée's designs were gasp-inspiring. I had been hoping for some sort of context, in how his designs, severe and classical and above all, gargantuan, fit into the time of the Revolution, mais non, rien, nothing, except translations of his own writings (and yes, gorgeous reproductions of his designs, of which I'm still not sure how many made it into actuality).

Here's a couple of excerpts:

Inside the city
The interior walls of the city are decorated differently and lead one to suppose the presence of a double wall. I consider that such multiple defenses not only make the city appear unassailable, but also give variety to my subject.

Gates of fortified cities
My various city gates consist of walls flanked by Towers. The basement of one of them is made of supplies of Cannon Balls under Trophies made of the arms of Giant warriors. The arch, or rather the archivolts, are made of gun barrels.

And here I was wondering how his work fit into his times. Seems like his work would fit well into our times as well. Or all urban times, perhaps.

In the meantime, on discussing the infinite library essay with Andres Clerici, Andres sent me some intriguing links on Borges-related authors, such as Oliverio Girondo and the aforementioned Xul Solar. Andres also mentions Cortazar's story, "La Casa Tomada," and his book "bestiario," "a great book from 1951." Andres also says Borges was good friends with Adolfo Bioy Casares, whose novel Morel's Invention was recently (relatively at least, for translations--2003) translated and published by New York Review of Books Classics.

What do these authors have to do, actually, with an infinite library? Well, that's the point. In order to research an essay on an infinite library, one has to cast out in all directions, almost randomly, in order to approximate that sense of infinity. How can one humanly support such infinite research? A: With either great enjoyment or great stress, especially since the essay is due in about two weeks.

Noitalsnart is here!

Announcing the publication of:

Noitalsnart, a handsome and handmade production featuring translations of Jorges Luis Borges, Anna Akhmatova, George Seferis, Paul Celan, and Con Ed street markings, along with poems, notes, poet-to-poet translations, reading responses, "english as a second third fourth or...more language" works, ammonia, and phonetic diagrams by Phyllis Wat, Nina Karacosta, Lydia Cortes, Andres Clerici, Tony Hoffman, Stephanie Gray, Susana Maio, and Marcella Durand. (Special appearance by John Wayne.)

To get your copy, come to the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church (2nd Ave. and 10th St.) on February 2nd at 9:30 pm, where participants in the Translate This! workshop will read.

30 copies

Hi everyone,

Don't forget to bring 30 copies of your poem or poems tomorrow night for Noitalsnart. And if anyone has a heavy-duty stapler, please bring it in too, as apparently the poproj office is lacking in one.

Andres asked for some names of journals that publish translations and bilingual poetries, so I thought I'd post my response here. While this is certainly not an encyclopedic list (and let's see if I can get blogger $#@! links to work), it may be a helpful starting point.

Circumference is a newish journal devoted to work in translation that I like. They print both the original language and the translation. Two Lines is another journal I've seen around. If you're interesting in publishing a book, Archipelago is a new book publisher devoted to works in translation. XCP used to publish works from languages other than English, but I'm not sure if they're still around. Mandorla is devoted to Spanish-language poetries, but I'm not sure if it's restricted to the Americas or not.

OK, Lydia sent another Borges translation, which I'm posting in both languages, intertwined, as she sent it to me:

El puñal

The Dagger


En un cajón hay un puñal.

In a drawer there is a dagger.

Fue forjado en Toledo, a fines del siglo pasado; Luis Melián Lafinur se lo dio a mi

It was forged in Toledo, toward the end of the last century; Luis Melián Lafinur told

padre, que lo trajo del Uruguay; Evaristo Carriego lo tuvo alguna vez en la mano.

my father, who brought if from Uruguay; Evaristo Carriego once held it in his hand.

Quienes lo ven tienen que jugar un rato con él; se advierte que hace mucho que lo

Those who see it must play for a while with it; be warned that for a long time it was

buscaban; la mano se apresura a apretar la empuñadura que la espera;

sought; the hand hurries to grasp the handle that awaits it;

la hoja obediente y poderosa juega con precisión en la vaina.

the obedient and powerful leaf plays in its pod with precision.



Otra cosa quiere el puñal.

The dagger wants something else.

Es más que una estructura hecha de metales; los hombres lo pensaron y lo formaron

It is more than a structure made of metals; men thought it up and fashioned it

para un fin muy preciso; es, de algún modo eterno, el puñal que anoche mató un

for a very precise end; it is, in a certain way eternal, the dagger that last night killed

hombre en Tacuarembó y los puñales que mataron a César. Quiere matar, quiere

a man in Tacuarembo and the daggers that killed Caesar. It wants to kill, wants

derramar brusca sangre.

to spill sudden blood.



En un cajón del escritorio, entre borradores y cartas, interminablemente sueña el

In a desk drawer, amongst erasers and letters, the dagger interminably dreams

puñal con su sencillo sueño de tigre, y la mano se anima cuando lo rige porque el

its simple tiger dream, and the hand cheers up when it grips it because the

metal se anima, el metal que presiente en cada contacto al homicida para quien lo

metal cheers up, the metal that presides in each contact with the murderer for whom

crearon los hombres.

men created it.



A veces me da lástima. Tanta dureza, tanta fe, tan apacible o inocente soberbia, y

Sometimes I feel pity. Such harshness, so much faith, such gentle or innocent arrogance, and

los años pasan, inútiles.

the years pass, useless.


--Lydia Cortes

Fastest Borges Ever

So this translation of Jorge Luis Borges's "Shinto" clocked in at six minutes, from 8:56 pm to 9:03 pm on January 4, 2007.

Shinto

When unhappiness hits us,
in a second we are saved
by the infamous adventures
of attention or memory:
the flavor of fruit,
the flavor of water,
that face that the dream returns to us,
the first jasmine of November,
the infinite yearning of the compass,
a book we believed lost,
the pulse of the hexameter,
the tiny key that opens a house,
the odor of a library or sandlewood,
the ancient name of a street,
the color of a map,
unexpected etymology,
the tip of a fingernail on a filing board,
the date we were looking for,
count the twelve dark bells,
abrupt physical pain.

Eight million are the divinities of Shinto
that travel to earth, secretly.
These modest entities touch us
and then leave us.

--Translated by Andres Clerici, Phyllis Wat, Nina Karacosta, Tony Hoffman, Stephanie Gray, and Marcella Durand.