Stuffing a (Blue)Stocking

Happy holidays, Gentle Readers!

Christmas is quickly approaching.  The house is decorated.  The krumkaka is made (it's a Norwegian cookie without which my Christmas is incomplete, and a little sad).  The wicked-smaht corgi we're dog-sitting for the holidays arrives tomorrow.  And Sister Dear arrived at 2am after a grueling 26-hour ordeal filled with lost luggage, delayed flights, missed connections, and a multiplicity of frantic phone calls. 

 

So I am happily wrapping everyone's presents and beginning to fantasize about my own.  I know it's late for this sort of thing, but if you still need a gift for the bluestocking in your life, let me hand out some suggestions.  And, you know, if you want to get your favorite book-blogger a little something special, I always accept gifts, even if they're late for Christmas.

1) If you want to go last-minute, can't-miss, Holy-Schnikes-is-it-Xmas-Eve-already?, I recommend book gift cards.  We love 'em.  We really love when you pick out a book for us yourself, but you also can't lose with a gift card.  It allows us hours of deliberation and wandering the aisles of the local bookstore, trying to decide whether the giftcard allows the splurge of one good hardback, or the quantity-over-quality of multiple paperbacks.  These are the sorts of crises we thrive upon.

2) For the outdoorsy type (you know, the kind that reads out in the fresh air), grab this reader's chair.  It has holes for your arms, and a place for your face to rest.  Anyone who has tried to read a book of any size on a chaise lounge understands why this seeming combination of lounger and massage table is absolute genius.  No more having to weight down your book pages with rocks, or sunglasses, or water bottles, because your arms lose feeling from hanging over the edge.  No more weird pressure on your throat as you try to rest your head over the tippy top of the lounge chair.  No more chaise lounge yoga, Gentle Readers!
(This picture is straight from my Pinterest board, but no longer connects to the manufacturer's website.  The closest thing I can find is this chair, on eBay.) 

3) For the wee ones, try a classic book like Eloise at Christmastime (Thompson).  Or, discerning consumers that you are,  find new favorites like When Dinosaurs Came with Everything (Broach), The Mitten (Brett), or Library Lion (Knudsen). The illustrations are fabulous in all four, and each story is great for girly girls, manly boys, and everyone in between.  Or start a children's book collection of your own.  I may own a few (hundred) kids' titles, without actually owning any children. 

4) For grammar geeks, I have two solid options.  There are these  fabulous mugs and an amazing t-shirt, available for both sexes, that reads "Misuse of 'literally' makes me figuratively insane."  Each gift allows the recipient to do two important things: inform an audience while judging others.  These passive-aggressive impulses are dear to grammar geek hearts.  And yes, we did notice your grammatical error this morning; we were just too kind to point it out.
 
5) Most booklovers wear our hearts on our sleeves.  We also like to wear our favorite texts there!  If the grammar t-shirt above doesn't make the reader in your life swoon, I can recommend some other options.  Most of these t-shirts come in slightly different cuts for women and men, but any book lovin' girl will rock a boxy t-shirt with the right slogan.  Try a team t-shirt for the Innsmouth Swim Team for your esoteric horror fan, the confident I Just Nevilled Up for your Potterhead, or one of the so very many versions of Talk Nerdy to Me.  I also like the one that proclaims that the wearer is a Literary Rebel: I Read Past My Bedtime.

 6) A woman with a slightly more ladylike sartorial style would appreciate these tights, and this text-printed infinity scarf.  This Etsy seller has lots of texts to choose from, including Arthur Conan Doyle, Lewis Carroll, and Jane Austen, but I prefer the Romeo & Juliet edition of the scarf. If the recipient is a writer (or has crummy circulation), there are also cotton fingerless gloves that are very sweet.  

7) Or you can upgrade to jewelry.  No worries, though, we're not talking diamonds.  We're talking leather.  Any girl with more books than sense will drool for this super expensive necklace. Don't worry, the individual leather book necklaces aren't nearly $400 like this one, but they are just as sweet.  And the Harry Potter fan in your life desperately needs this horcrux necklace, even if she doesn't yet know it herself.  Because Potterphiles will be jealous and Muggles don't count.  

8) If you know a YA aficionado looking for a fix, try the sweet and inspiring My Most Excellent Year (Kluger) or John Green's incomparable An Abundance of Katherines.  If your YA lover is more of a Hunger Games fan, try Pure (Baggott).  It's just as dark, and possibly even more twisted.  The sequel, Fuse, suffers from sophomore book syndrome, but I have high hopes for Burn, which will be out in late February (yep, it's probably a series review to come).

9) If you're looking for something incredible and personalized, Jane Mount will make an individualized print of your very very mostest favorite books.  She has awesome ready-made prints of various book "collections," like Fantasy, Poetry, Kids, even Golf.  My problem is that in her ready-made collections, there is usually at least one book I'm not crazy about...so I may have to spring for the custom print, which is pricy, but would be totally worth it. 

Or, for arty types with more wallspace than bookshelf space, try this frame-able poster with the complete text of a favorite book.  I like both Litographs and Postertext, although there are others.  In my opinion, Litographs has the edge here, since they print in color, but I do love this Peter Pan from Postertext:

 

10)  I would be remiss, Gentle Readers, if I did not recommend two of my favorite books to you, and by extension, to the reader in your life.  Neither have yet been reviewed on this site, but mostly that's because I'm not sure I can be objective in a review when all I want to do is shove the book into your hands and scream "Just read it!  Then we can be friends!"  *ahem*

Carlos Ruis Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind is a gothic, creepy love letter to readers everywhere.  It's an obsessive quest fueled by the world's perfect novel, and it will break your heart and freeze your blood.  This stunning prose is translated from the Spanish, and the translator has the soul of a poet.  (For more on my craziness on translations, see my rant about Dante.)  The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss is one of the most beautifully-written fantasy novels ever written.  Even Sister Dear, who doesn't much like fantasy, read this book over and over just because it's so pretty!  Its sequel, The Wise Man's Fear, is lovely as well, and I am chomping at the bit waiting for The Doors of Stone (working title), which as of yet has no release date!  So, you know, "Just read it!  Then we can be friends!"

EXTRA CREDIT: If all else fails, Gentle Readers, combine most booklover's two favorite things: literature and wine.  Try this bottle of wine, in "As You Wish" white or "Inconceivable" red, both from Bottle of Wits.  I have no idea if it's good wine, but who cares?  Everyone needs to own this bottle of wine. It is, of course, best served while reading a copy of the book and/or watching the DVD.  Anything else would be inconceivable!

Have a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, O Gentle Readers!  I'll be back soon with more reviews, fun stuff from the intertubes, and tales of camels from far-off lands.  Enjoy your holidays, snuggle up next to a roaring fire, and crack open a good book.  That's where I'll be!

Translations are Hell (Choosing an Inferno): Naomi

I've been re-reading Dante's Inferno.   For fun. (I know, I know.  I am that deeply geeky.)  And I am madly in love with my translation of it, and wanted to share it with you, Gentle Readers.  

Dante's 9 levels of Hell, by Sandro Botticelli

A few words about translations: I am a self-confessed translation snob.  Perhaps it’s the training in Shakespeare, which makes me reticent to accept subpar renditions.  For example, I have seen many editions of Shakespeare where footnoted modernizations turn Hamlet into hamburger.  Shakespeare says:

… There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all…. (V.ii.)

If I were to “translate,” I might say: “God controls everything, even something as small as a sparrow’s death.  If something happens now, it’s supposed to.  If it’s not happening now, it will happen later.  All we can do is prepare.”  

Now, the first passage gives me goosebumps, and makes me *happy sigh* a little each time I hear it; it’s truth-in-poetry.  The second one is mere explanation: dry, soulless, lacking. 

I don’t want to dislike a book or an author because the translation is bad.  The translation should give the ideas of the original author a chance to affect a larger audience.  That’s why we translate books…

So I can read Dante, when I don’t read Italian.  

Rodin's "Gates of Hell"

 When it comes to choosing a translation edition, I have a process:  choose a passage, find it in each book, compare.  It’s how I buy translations, dictionaries, even travel guides.  When I chose my Dante a few years ago, I spent about two hours sitting on the floor in Very Distinguished University’s bookstore, surrounded by every translation they had on hand.  As I pondered, I had a few criteria:

      1) The translation needed soul.  So all prose translations were put back on the shelf.  This girl was not interested. 

2) I wanted, but did not require, a facing-page translation.  (You know, original language on one page; translation on the other.)  Because of my Romance language background, I like to look at the original language and see how much I can parse it.  Some editions have the original text in Part I of the book, followed by the translation in Part II, but that’s pretty clunky to navigate.

      3) Scholarly notes.  I prefer footnotes to endnotes, but I definitely wanted the occasional editorial comment on context or word choice.  Since I’ve never taken a class on Dante, and I was reading for education as well as pleasure, I wanted someone to give me a little guidance. 

After a few hours of consideration, I chose Michael Palma’s translation of Inferno.  This was a wonderful decision, as the book is fabulous.  This was a terrible decision, as he has not published Purgatorio or Paradiso.  And I need them!

I have such a crush on Palma’s translation.  It’s not word-for-word exact.  But the soul is right.  So many writers are intimidated by translating poetry.  It’s with excellent reason—good poetry is hard enough to write oneself, let alone trying to capture the essence of someone else’s poetry while remaining true to the original rhyme scheme.  Dante in particular has been a challenge, and so many translators have thrown up their hands and reverted to prose!  O the humanity.  Translators have done Dante in free verse, blank verse, and bastardized terza rima with elimination of the linking rhyme. 

[For those who are unfamiliar, Gentle Readers, terza rima is a poetic rhyme scheme collected in tercets, or lines of three, much like a couplet is collected & rhymed in twos.  Each middle line—for example, the “B” of an A-B-A tercet—is the main rhyme for the following tercet.  To wit: A-B-A, B-C-B, C-D-C, D-E-D, etc.  Terza rima is traditionally iambic (an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable), which sounds like a heartbeat (duh-DUM).  Shakespeare is also traditionally iambic.]  

Palma keeps Dante’s terza rima (including the linking rhyme), so the rhythm and the rhyme pull your reading forward.  He also keeps the beauty, so when you read about Paolo and Francesca, you’re struck with the hopelessness of their passion and their punishment.  (Did you know that Rodin’s The Kiss is figured after Paolo and Francesca?  The statue illustrates the moment of the first forbidden kiss, when “that day we did not read another line.”)

In his introduction, Palma explains why his translation is a little less flowery than some others.  He reminds the reader that Dante is famous for writing in Italian—the vernacular—rather than Latin.  In Dante’s lifetime, “serious” works of literature were written in Latin, partly so that other intellectuals could read one another's ideas without translation problems (O the irony!), and partly so that authors appeared to be extending classical lines of inquiry.  Latin showed that these authors were taking up the torch, so to speak. Dante changed that.  He wrote a “serious” work of literature, a piece with religious overtones, classical bones, and political significance, and he wrote it in everyday speech.  

So Palma keeps his translation pretty lean and mean.  The words are well-chosen but the manipulation of language seems effortless.  It’s clear, it’s readable, and it’s still lovely. 

It’s not perfetto.  I have a few niggling problems: Palma’s “All you who enter, let no hope survive” does not hold a candle to John Ciardi’s “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”  Frankly, Palma's rendition of the most famous of all Dante quotations is pretty clunky.    But all in all, I’m a big fan. 

I won’t get even more pedantic in this post, but please don’t let Dante frighten you.  He’s canonical because he’s good, not necessarily because he’s hard.  If reading a prose translation gets you into reading Inferno, use it!  (Just don’t tell me.  My heart will bleed.)  Please give it a shot.  It’s lovely, it’s frightening, it’s intense.  And each Canto is pretty short, so each “chapter” is readable.  

Don’t abandon all hope… give the poetry a chance.  

Palma has two publications of his Inferno: the facing-page translation which I own, and the Norton Critical Edition, with additional essays and explication.  Both are available relatively cheaply.