Quotation marks or italics?

Aqui: http://theeditorsblog.net/2014/05/12/marking-text-choosing-between-italics-and-quotation-marks/

Elizabeth Bishop to Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1953)

TO CARLOS DRUMMOND DE ANDRADE

Antonio Vieira 5, apt. 1101
Leme
June 27th, 1963

Dear Dr. Carlos:
Here is a translation of one of your poems, and I hope you will have time to look at it. I began with this one because it seems to go into English fairly easily-- I hope you'll take my word for it that it makes a very moving poem in English as well as in Portuguese. The translation is quite literal-- except for very small liberties with punctuation, omitting "ands" etc.-- to keep the meter right. I've written in the margin some second choices, or spots where I may be wrong-- but please tell me anything you don't like-- or if you don't like any of it!
I've been asked by a magazine (USA) for translations of Brazilian poetry-- a small, reputable, old magazine, POETRY (Chicago)*--perhaps you know it? I'd like to send them a group of your poems as soon as I can, but with your approval. I am working on A MESA now-- it's much more difficult, naturally, but it's one of those I like best. I've also tried some of the shorter rhymed ones-- they're almost impossible, of course, because of the rhymes-- but I'd like to give the US reader an impression of the range of your poetry, if possible--and I'll write a note explaining the shortcomings of the translations. …{excerpt}

Cordially yours,
Elizabeth Bishop.
{Scher: you might enjoy this more personal side of Bishop and the deference she pays to Andrade}

"The Making of Americans", Gertrude Stein

Biography

On February 3, 1874, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (USA), Gertrude Stein was born to upper-class Jewish parents, being the youngest of five children. In 1903, Stein moved to Paris, where she lived and wrote until the end of her days (July 27, 1946).

Initially, Gertrude Stein bought and kept a studio along with Leo, one of her brothers. Later on, she met her life partner, Alice B. Toklas. Pablo Picasso was also one of Stein’s greatest friends and influences.

In the USA, Stein studied under psychologist William James at Radcliffe College—an annex of Harvard University— and at Johns Hopkins, performing experiments on normal motor automatism, which yielded examples of writing that appeared to represent "stream of consciousness".

In fact, science itself, as well as some elements of naturalism, namely objectivity (or objectivity of abstraction[1]), a tendency for description and an interest for minorities and the marginalized (perhaps such as herself to some extent: a Jewish, immigrant-descendant, lesbian, feminist), seem to feature in some of Stein’s early works.

Writing Style

Following the 20^th century literary trend to reconstruct form and language, and trying to escape from the idea that everything must bear meaning, must have a beginning, a middle and an end, Gertrude Stein created a peculiar literary style. So peculiar and particular that it came to be known as Steinese.

Steinese is thought-provoking and open-ended, as it leaves it to the reader to decide on what to conclude from the writings. And Stein’s reader is indeed an active participant.

There are different phases to Steinese, but one of the most important characteristics of its initial phases is the fact it was meant to become the literary equivalent to cubism, as Stein tried to incorporate some plasticity to her writings. She aimed at creating movement and passing on the idea that getting to know and understanding something or someone is a process, one which takes times and requires repetition (or "insistence" to use her words).

This «gnomic, repetitive, illogical and sparsely punctuated»[2] style was used in works such as Tender Buttons and The Making of Americans (although these books represent different phases of Steinese):

Then also there is the important question of repetition and is there any such thing. Is there repetition or is there insistence. I am inclined to believe there is no such thing as repetition. And really how can there be.... once started expressing this thing, expressing anything there can be no repetition because the essence of that expression is insistence, and if you insist you must each time use emphasis and if you use emphasis it is not possible while anybody is alive that they should use exactly the same emphasis. (Gertrude Stein, “Portraits and Repetition”)

Her friendship with Picasso — and the influence of his cubist art, along with the previously mentioned experiments — played a vital role in Stein’s writing style and her being an “experimental” modernist.

Reading Steinese is much like viewing cubist art. Stein and Pablo Picasso were friends, and when Picasso introduced his cubist paintings around 1909, Stein began implementing cubist styles into her own work” | “In order to make any sense at all of her rambling writing style, her reader absolutely must be an active participant.” | “ln Stein's The Making of Americans, she got rid of nouns and adjectives as much as possible by the method of living in adverbs in verbs in pronouns in adverbial clauses written or implied and in conjunctions. (Nicole Williams and Amanda Morrish, “No Ordinary English: Gertrude Stein Defines Literacy”)

“A rose is a rose is a rose” is the perfect example of Steinese in action: only three different words are used in the sentence, repeated, but most likely not all of them are the same “rose”, so the reader is left with trying to interpret what Stein wanted to say with this, and “(…) what people loved they repeated, and what people repeated they loved”.

Language is plastic, but its plasticity must be informed and determined by the philosophy or, at least, by the information it conveys. In her earlier works, Gertrude Stein operated under this injunction naturally; but as she continued, her attraction to painting led her to wish for the same plastic freedom for literature were endowed with such freedom. ‘The painter,’ said Georges Braque, ‘knows things by sight; the writer, who knows them by name, profits by a prejudice in his favor.’ This was the profit Gertrude Stein threw away. (John Malcolm Brinnin, The Third Rose)

On The Making of Americans

This is the story, the history, and psychological development of the members of two fictional families: the Hersland and the Dehning.

In this novel, Stein includes frequent metafictional meditations—a part of which we tried to translate and analyze—on the process of writing. These meditations sometimes overtake the main narrative.

Essentially, The Making of Americans is the author’s attempt to describe every known type of human being, each one with their own essence and knowledge and the repetition that there is in them.

There is a history in all living beings, and Stein’s struggle seems to consist on slowly getting to know what is inside every one and hearing all the details and repetitions, to arrive at a completed understanding of the many different kinds of men and women that sometimes intertwine in a single human being. Her unusual use of the present participle is one of the most commonly noted features of the text.

As I was saying loving listening, hearing always all repeating, coming to completed understanding of each one is to some a natural way of being.

Como estava a dizer amar escutar, ouvir sempre e tudo repetir, chegar a um pleno entender de cada um é para alguns uma forma natural de ser.

Como dizia a adorar o que escutava, a ouvir sempre tudo quanto se repete, chegar a uma compreensão total de cada um é para alguns uma forma natural de ser.

Como ia dizendo amando escutando, ouvindo sempre tudo quanto se vai repetindo, chegar a um pleno entendimento de alguém é para alguns uma forma natural de ser.

 

Ana Catarina Brasil

João Lacerda Costa
 

Bibliography

Brinnin, John Malcom (1987). The Third Rose: Gertrude Stein and Her World. Radcliffe Biography Series.

Cecire, Natalie. Experimental: American Literature and the Aesthetics of Knowledge, 1880-1950. Retrieved from http://english.duke.edu/uploads/assets/cecire-stein.pdf (accessed on 07/12/2015).

Gopnik, Adam (2013, June 24). Understanding Steinese. The New Yorker. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/understanding-steinese (accessed on 07/12/2015).

Secor, Cynthia. Gertrude Stein: Classroom Issues and Strategies. Retrieved from http://faculty.georgetown.edu/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/stein.html (accessed on 07/12/2015).

Stein, Gertrude (1971, September 8). Portraits and Repetition: an essay by Gertrude Stein (audio). Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/AM_1971_09_08_c2 (accessed on 07/12/2015).

Stein, Gertrude (1982) (introduction by F.W. Dupee) (edited by Carl Van Vechten). Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein. New York: Vintage Books - Random House.

Williams, Nicole and Morrish, Amanda (2006).  No Ordinary English: Gertrude Stein Defines Literacy. Undergraduate Review. Volume 2.  Article 5. Bridgewater State University. Retrieved from http://vc.bridgew.edu/undergrad_rev/vol2/iss1/5 (accessed on 07/12/2015).

 

---

[1] Natalia Cecire, Experimental: American Literature and the Aesthetics of Knowledge, 1880-1950, retrieved from http://english.duke.edu/uploads/assets/cecire-stein.pdf

[2] F.W. Dupee, in introduction to The Selected Writings of Gretrude Stein (1972). New York: Vintage Books - Random House

Elizabeth Bishop's Last Sonnet

Sonnet Caught -- the bubble
in the spirit level,
a creature divided;
and the compass needle
wobbling and wavering,
undecided.
Freed -- the broken
thermometer's mercury
running away;
and the rainbow-bird
from the narrow bevel
of the empty mirror,
flying wherever
it feels like, gay! 

(1979)

Joseph Cornell's box, Hotel Eden (c. 1945)

Elizabeth Bishop: homework for December 17th

Reply to either of the following:

1. Comment on Bishop's translations of Drummond de Andrade's "Poema de Sete Faces" (p. 367-268 and 275, anthology)

2. Read some of the poems included in Bishop's poetry collection, Questions of Travel (1965) and speculate on what in her writing style and themes might have drawn her to translate the examples of Brazilian modernist poetry she chose to render in English.

Na Banheira com Gertrude Stein by Angélica de Freitas (in Rilke Shake, 2007)

na banheira com gertrude stein

gertrude stein tem um bundão chega pra lá gertude stein e quando ela chega pra lá faz um barulhão como se alguém passasse um pano molhado na vidraça enorme de um edifício público

gertrude stein daqui pra cá é você o paninho de lavar atrás da orelha é todo seu daqui pra cá sou eu o patinho de borracha é meu e assim ficamos satisfeitas

mas gertrude stein é cabotina acha graça em soltar pum debaixo d'água eu hein gertrude stein? não é possível que alguém goste tanto de fazer bolha

e aí como a banheira é dela ela puxa a rolha e me rouba a toalha

e sai correndo pelada a bunda enorme descendo a escada e ganhando as ruas de st.germain-de-près

Some paintings and Gertrude Stein

Millet, Man with a Hoe (1962)

Cezanne, The Bathers (1898-1900)

Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans (1925)

As I was saying loving listening, hearing always all repeating, coming to completed understanding of each one is to some a natural way of being.

(…)

Sometimes then it comes out of them a louder repeating that before was not clear to anybody's hearing and then it is a completed being to some one listening to the repeating coming out of such a one.  

(…)

This is then now a description of loving repeating being in some. 

This is then now a description of loving repeating being in one.  

(untitled, 1927)

Picasso (1938) by G. Stein

It is strange about everything, it is strange about pictures, a picture may seem extraordinarily strange to you and after some time not only it does not seem strange but it is impossible to find what there was in it that was strange.

A child sees the face of its mother, it sees it in a completely different way than other people see it, I am not speaking of the spirit of the mother but of the features and the whole face, a child sees it from very near, it is a large face for the eyes of a small one, it is certain that the child for a little while only sees a part of the face of its mother, it knows one feature and not another, one side and not the other, and in his way Picasso knows faces as a child knows them and the head and the body. He was then commencing to try to express this consciousness and the struggle was appalling because, with the exception of some African sculpture, no one had ever tried to express things seen not as one knows them but as they are when one sees them without remembering having looked at them.

Really most of the time one sees only a feature of a person with whom one is, the other features are covered by a hat, by the light, by clothes for sport and everybody is accustomed to complete the whole entirely from their knowledge, but Picasso when he saw an eye, the other one did not exist for him and as a painter, and particularly a Spanish painter, he was right, one sees what one sees, the rest is reconstruction from memory and painters have nothing to do with memory, they concern themselves only with visible things and so the cubism of Picasso was an effort to make a picture of these visible things and the result was disconcerting for him and for the others, but what else could he do, a creator can only do one thing, he can only continue, that is all he can do.

Fernando Pessoa

Segue o teu destino... Rega as tuas plantas; Ama as tuas rosas. O resto é a sombra de árvores alheias. (Fernando Pessoa)

Enquanto não superarmos a ânsia do amor sem limites, não podemos crescer emocionalmente. (Fernando Pessoa)

O valor das coisas não está no tempo que elas duram, mas na intensidade com que acontecem. Por isso, existem momentos inesquecíveis, coisas inexplicáveis e pessoas incomparáveis ... (Fernando Pessoa)

The World as India, Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag was born on January 16, 1933 and died on December 28, 2004. She was an American literary theorist, novelist, filmmaker and human rights activist.

Best known works: Against Interpretation (1966), Styles of Radical Will (1969), On Photography (1977), Illness as Metaphor (1978), The Way We Live Now (1991), The Volcano Lover (1992), In America (1999) and Regarding the Pain of Others (2003).

Honours: 2001 Jerusalem Prize, 2003 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, 2003 Prince of Asturias Prize, the National Book Award for In America (2000), and the National Book Critics Circle Award for On Photography (1978). 

“The World as India”

Translation - Tentative Definitions 

Susan Sontag defines translating as “to circulate, to transport, to disseminate, to explain, to make (more) accessible” (219). As a strong “evangelical incentive”, translation aims to make a book/text reach as many people as possible. Sontag discusses the presupposition of a pyramid on translation: a sort of hierarchical relationship in which the most important texts stand at the very top of the pyramid. This hierarchy tends to be modified over the years, as the paradigm is never the same. On ethical issues, no matter how literal the translation is, there will always be some unavoidable change.

Sontag defines, therefore, two different points of view in translation:

• A new/modern perspective, which deals with translation as a problem to which translators find solutions;
• An older perspective, where translators would choose consciously in their activity; translators wield a certain knowledge which helps them making their choices. Then, it is implied that they carry a sense of culture and duty to literature itself. Values of integrity, responsibility, fidelity and humility are considered part of their job.

The text’s inherent quality, also called translatability (term introduced by Roman Jakobson), defines the translation’s difficulty in degrees or stages. This doesn't only concern the transposition to another language, but also to the (in)transigence of a text “which points to something inherent in the work quite outside the intentions or awareness of its author” (220).

Any comparison of two languages implies an examination of their mutual translatability; widespread practice of interlingual communication, particularly translating activities, must be kept under constant scrutiny by linguistic science. On linguistic Aspects of Translation, Roman Jakobson (1959)

The Translator's Fidelity in the History of Translation

Fidelity and accuracy regarding the original text has been one of the greatest issues in translation. Sontag refers two opposite theories, regarding translation as a practice (223):

St. Jerome was a Catholic priest, confessor, theologian and historian, who also became a Doctor of the Church and translator from Hebrew and Greek to Latin whose theory claims translation is always an impoverishment of the original; the elegance and lyrical aspect of the original text isn’t translatable to a target language. Literal translation isn’t the proper method to proceed with; one should worry about the sense conveyed by the original text to its audience and preserve it, but change the words and metaphors to the ones that suit the target audience and its language. Hence, the person becomes a translator and a co-author.

It is hard to follow another man’s lines… It is an arduous task to preserve felicity and grace unimpaired in a translation.

Friedrich Schleiermacher, a German theologian, philosopher and biblical scholar known for his attempt to reconcile the criticisms of the Enlightenment with traditional Protestant Christianity, whose theory claims the value of translation is connected to the knowledge of something beyond our own country and culture. Translation should keep “the spirit of the language” of the original (223). It should be read as a translation, not as if the book was written in the target language. Otherwise, the reader won’t recognize the foreignness that could enrich him/her. To be “well read” shouldn’t be a standard in literary translation, especially if the translators seek merit.

…the aim of translating in a way such as the author would have originally written in the language of the translation is not only out of reach, but also null and void in itself, for whoever acknowledges the shaping power of language, as it is one with the peculiar character of a nation, must concede that every most excellent human being has acquired his knowledge, as well as the possibility of expressing it, in and through language, and that no one therefore adheres to his language mechanically as if he were strapped into it… (223)

According to Walter Benjamin in The Task of the Translator (1923), a preface to his translation of Baudelaire’s Tableux parisiens, translators have the obligation to keep the effect of what is written, even if it sounds different than what the target audience is used to from their authors (225). Even the original text contains difference itself; it’s not about meaning, but translating this difference. Difference will have people think and theorize about the literary work.

It is not the highest praise of a translation, particularly in the age of its origin, to say that it reads as if it had originally been written in that language.

Globalization, the Dominance of English, and Ethics of Translation

Globalization and technology have surely brought some changes for translation. Therefore, we cannot, as Schleiermacher, argue so easily that a spirit of a language resides in its originality. Some argue English is a lingua franca, since it serves as means of communication between people with different languages. Such is the case in India, where different languages are spoken (222). Sontag uses India’s case as an analogy to what’s going on in the world today, using it as a tittle for this essay as well: we all have different languages and it’s important to preserve them, but English tends to be our first choice when communicating with people from a different culture.

Weltliteratur or World Literature was a concept proposed by Goethe in the 19th century. He envisioned the circulation and reception of literary works in Europe, which would allow readers/scholars to access translations and book/text’s discussions that otherwise wouldn’t be available to them. In the 20th century, an International Parliament wanted to make this happen for the whole world, an idea in which all the nations would stand as equals. Translators would become even more important, almost as if couriers who permitted everyone to read each other’s books. Although this equality never came to pass, since some languages are given more importance than others, the idea of a circulatory literature brings forward what Sontag affirms to be one of the most important reasons behind literature and translation: to know the existence of other people and cultures and, therefore, to educate one another.

Translation is the circulatory system of the world’s literatures. (226)

Catarina da Silva C.

Paula Vanessa Varela

Homework for December 10

Read Gerturde Stein's Paris France (starting p. 242 of the anthology + the correct pages I have sent you by email) and comment on:

1. Reflections on interculturality, intersemiotics and interlinguistics.

2. Which kind of discourse on translation and Modernism can be produced through reading these pages from Gertrude Stein?

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Creative Reading"

There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world. We then see, what is always true, that, as the seer's hour of vision is short and rare among heavy days and months, so is its record, perchance, the least part of his volume. The discerning will read, in his Plato or Shakspeare, only that least part, — only the authentic utterances of the oracle; — all the rest he rejects, were it never so many times Plato's and Shakspeare's.

(Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar, 1837)

An Exhibition at Our Faculty

Friends! I would very much like you to go and check my photographs. I am sure that most of you will be surprised after watching them, still I want everyone not only to look at them as photos but also to try to translate them as we do with a poem. 

Because our professor told us always to mention our sources, I declare that in ordering my photographs I took the inspiration from this piece of music. And if I was to quote I would say from the beginning until the minute seven ;) 

Here is a clip from his concert in Lisbon in 2012:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_issoKL3PRY

You can listen to more like this at the exhibition. Enjoy :)

"Voyelles" par Arhtur Rimbaud (written 1872 published 1883)

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu : voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes :
A, noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes
Qui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles,

Golfes d'ombre ; E, candeurs des vapeurs et des tentes,
Lances des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons d'ombelles ;
I, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles
Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes ;

U, cycles, vibrement divins des mers virides,
Paix des pâtis semés d'animaux, paix des rides
Que l'alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux ;

O, suprême Clairon plein des strideurs étranges,
Silences traversés des Mondes et des Anges :
- O l'Oméga, rayon violet de Ses Yeux !