Recovering from my traditional holiday week cold, while deleting overnight unsolicited spicy ham product, when I stumbled [via Cinecultist] across a top ten movie list for the previous year in which I’ve actually seen seven out of ten movies and agree that they were good. Watched Angels in America last night and thought it was a rather good adaptation of a play. I had heard Tony Kushner earlier this year talking about writing the play, the screenplay, etc., and had been looking forward to it. I enjoyed it and my personal ill health just added to the experience. At some point during the past couple of days V. got me a documentary film by Jim Shedden on Stan Brakhage to add to the DVDs of his œuvre she gave me earlier this season. She couldn’d find it in stock online so she emailed the director and he pointed her to a store that had it. Ah, the web, the net, the rhizome.
Saw a great double bill yesterday Boxing Day afternoon on DVD: À ma sœur! (called Fat Girl in its US release) by Catherine Breillat and How to Draw a Bunny by John W. Walter. At first I thought the film about the death of proto-pop artist Ray Johnson was a mockumentary. It had a strange and familiar edge to it, like I’d seen it before on late-night TV, but somewhat later I remembered having read an article about Johnson in Arthur Danto’s wonderful The Madonna of the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World. My favorite sets of interviewees were Jeanne-Claude and Christo and Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein. Both couples sounded as mirth-inducingly confused as my dad’s generation confronting Warhol’s Brillo Box when they tried to explain what Johnson was on about. In the French movie, the scene of the older sister’s seduction was both hilarious and banally sad. I’ll have to put Breillat’s Romance on the Netflix queue.
UJG listed in Amazon. Exceeding strange, but I guess blogs have arrived. [via Chutry Experiment] Looks like Amazon is using their frontend to track websites in general. Powered by Alexa and A9.
1. Saw Stravinsky’s Rake’s Progress (libretto by W. H Auden and Chester Kallman) on Friday at the Metro Theater in Oakland. The light board failed that evening, so the lighting was reduced to an ancient follow spot. The show must go on. The production had some rough edges but was enjoyable. The opera is based on a set of 8 prints by William Hogarth [1697–1764]. 2. Saw Sideways on Saturday and enjoyed it. Two lovelorn losers traipsing through the California Central Coast wine country. From the director who brought us Citizen Ruth and Election. 3. Received an early birthday present from V.: the Criterion Collection edition of By Brakhage: An Anthology with 26 representative films. So far, so good.
I’ll be blogging lightly over the next couple of weeks, because I’m starting a new job tomorrow. Good news is that I get to have a work blog. So, I’ll link to it, when it’s up and running.
Bob Becker has scanned and posted the book haynt a tsaytung bay yidn 1908–1939 (Today a Periodical by Jews 1908–1939) by Chaim Finkelstein who was the last editor of haynt a daily Yiddish newspaper in Warsaw. Mr Becker is coordinating the online translation of this book. He has been given permission by Yadviga Finkelstein, the author’s widow, to reproduce the book in PDF form.
Here’s the next two stanzas of der volf. I feel honored to have such a reader as Zackary Sholem Berger who has risen to the challenge of teaching me good Yiddish. He has corrected some of my more egregious howlers.
un vi gar hot ayngeHeybn ayntsudremeln
hot er zikh gekhapt, az er hot nokh nisht gedavnt
keyn minkhe un keyn mayrev un nisht geleyent keyn krishme:
un er hot zikh oyfgezetst un gevolt nemen davenen—
ersht er hot dem nusekh fun davenen fargesn.
un az er hot derzen, az er hot oykh dos davenen fargesn,
hot im a shpar geton a tsvayter shtrom fun untern lefele,
un az der shtroM hot vider nisht gekent greykhn tsu zayne oygn
un geblibn shtekn in mitn fun zayn haldz—
hot shoyn der rov mer nisht gekent oysHaltn,
un er iz oyfgeshprungen un genumen loyfn
alts vayter un vayter mitn broytn shliakh.
And as he was about to fall asleep
he realized that he had not yet prayed
the afternoon prayer and the evening prayer
and the prayer said before going to bed:
and he sat up straight and he prepared to pray—
but first of all he had forgotten the form of the prayers.
And as he saw that he had also forgotten how to pray,
a second stream welled up from the pit of his stomach
and as the stream could not reach his eyes
and remained stuck in his throat—
the rabbi could no longer stand it,
and he jumped up and began to run
further away down the broad road.
Has it really been almost six months since my last installment of Leivick’s der volf? A damned shame: I shall try for weekly entries from now on.
un vi der rov hot gekukt mit zayne ofene oygn
azoy hobn di mili-milasn shtern
genumen raysn zikh un shlogn zikh ayne on di andere
un ibergeshpoltn ayne di andere,
biz zay zaynen gevorn ibershlungen in der fintsternish.
un az der rov hot gezen vi zay vern oysgeloshn,
hot es im nisht geart un er hot vayter gekukt.
un az ayn shtern, der Letster, hot zikh ayngeakshnt
un nisht gevolt farloshn vern,
hot der rov oysgeshtrekt zayn rekhte hant
un getaytlt mit a finger, biz der shtern
iz gevorn grin un gel un royt,
un alts nisht gevolt farloshn vern.
hot der rov arunterglozt zayn rekhte hant
un aroyfgelaygt zi oyf zayne bayde oygen,
vayl es hot im nisht geart mer farn letstn shtern,
un di hant iz gelegn oyf zayne oygn,
biz zi iz aruntergefaln alayn tsu der erd tsu,
vayl zayne bremen hobn ongehoybn ayntsudremlen.
[Addendum 12/07/04: Thanks to Zackary Sholem Berger for the corrections and emendations.] Previous part 3.
And as the rabbi watched with his open eyes
so did the myriads of stars
begin to quarrel and fight with one another
and split each other in half,
until they had been swallowed in the darkness.
And as the rabbi saw how they were extinguished,
he no longer cared and kept looking.
And as a star, the last one, grew stubborn
and did not want to disappear,
the rabbi stretched out his right hand
and pointed with his finger, until the star
became black and blue and red,
and still did not want to be extinguished.
And the rabbi lowered his right hand
and laid it on both his eyes,
because it did not concern him any further, the last star,
and the hand laid on his eyes,
until it fell by itself down to the earth,
because his eyebrows had begun to doze.
I’m afraid it’s going to take more than 23 installments (which is the number of pages in my copy of his works). Perhaps if I only attempt three or four stanzas I won’t be overwhelmed by it.
I hadn’t heard of or run across Da Shan (大山 aka Mark Rowswell) before, and that seems strange to me. He’s a non-Chinese ethnic Canadian who performs traditional Chinese comic dialog (相声 xiangsheng). He is almost unknown outside of China. [via Hanzi Smatter]
The last entry started me to thinking about Unicode and Hieroglyphic Egyptian, which lead to this interesting paper on the Phags-pa script. But getting back to hieroglyphics for just a moment. All brought to you by the JTC1 subcommittee 2 working group 2 (the international standardization subcommittee for coded character sets of ISO).
Haven’t been blogging recently. Meant to note a word I hadn’t come across before blet ‘to rot’ < Old French blet ‘decayed, rotten’ (> bletier) < Frankish blet ‘pale, sallow, pallid’. [via Laura’s persimmon entry at limon] I never did care for persimmons, but I had an earlier facination with quinces. Next letter over in the fruitish alphabet. Came across an interesting blog (Hanzi Smatters) that chronicles the misusage of hanzi (Chinese characters) in Western culture. [via Language Log] I really cannot imagine getting a tattoo, but getting a tattoo of incorrectly formed hanzi is just too bizarre.
[Addendum 12/06/04: Thanks to MM and misteraitch for pointing me at their respective entries on the medlar and its bletting. I also noticed today (in Meyer-Lübke) that French blesser ‘to wound’ derives from the Frankish verb blettian ‘to rot, decay; to wound’, and which unintentionally ties back to my tongue-in-cheek subject heading. The German Mispel, Basque mesmeru, mizpila, and Italian nespola come from Latin mespilus (variant *nespilus).]