Briggs’s introduction of Barthes (as translated by Richard Howard) into This Little Art introduces the idea of fantasy: “I sincerely believe that at the origin of teaching such as this we must always locate a fantasy, which can vary from year to year” (16). The context of this quotation is Barthes beginning a lecture series, and its placement in a section that comes right after the translation discussion sets up a connection between the fantasy involved in reading translation and the fantasy of the classroom and lecture hall: that the bodies of all those involved are contemporary. Barthes has learned his body is historical (he had the old form of tuberculosis), but he will pretend it’s contemporary with his students. We know The Magic Mountain is in German, but we will pretend everyone in it is speaking English.
I associate the word “fantasy” with fakery and illusion, but the fantasy here is very real: it’s based on a communal decision to work together. And, in a move that I love, Briggs is careful to bring the body into it (she follows Barthes in this): even though she was born after Barthes’s lecture was delivered, she is experiencing it and making it her contemporary through her physical experience of it.
As I read the Editor’s Preface by Nathalie Léger in Barthes’s The Preparation of the Novel, I was fascinated by this quotation from Barthes: “I’m not actually bothered about my chances of being fulfilled IN REAL TERMS (I don’t mind that they’re nonexistent). It’s just the will to fulfillment that blazes, that’s indestructible” (xxii). This is a quotation from A Lover’s Discourse, but in the context of the preface, it’s about the question of whether Barthes really wanted to write a novel or not. It’s tragic that Barthes’s death came so soon after The Preparation of the Novel, so we can never know whether the novel would have been written had he lived. But, as he says here, he’s not bothered about his chances of fulfillment. Instead, it’s all about desire. I agree that desire is the thing that matters, the space of joy and aliveness. That’s what I tell myself when I long for something to happen — it’s the longing that matters, not the thing happening — but I don’t really believe it. I tell myself that to make myself feel better. I suppose I know it to be true intellectually, but not in my bones. I feel that Barthes might know it in his bones, though. He seems like the kind of person who might dwell happily in the blaze of desire. What matters for him is the preparation, the planning, the book we have before us.
After reading this, I couldn't help but think a passage by Keats about pursuit; he noted that "every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardor of the pursuer - being in itself a nothing -" and this goes along so well with Barthes' not needing fulfillment but rather the will to fulfillment, that blazing and ardent desire.
it is such a terrible shame that he passed away before writing his novel but like you said, it really wasn't about the finished product! Which is such a hopeful and liberating thing.
It's such a fascinating quote. Here's a bit more. I love how he classes Love and Clouds together.
"As Tradesmen say every thing is worth what it will fetch, so probably every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardor of the pursuer - being in itself a nothing - Ethereal things may at least be thus real, divided under three heads - Things real - things semireal - and no things. Things real - such as existences of Sun Moon & Stars and passages of Shakspeare. Things semi-real such as Love, the Clouds &c which require a greeting of the Spirit to make them wholly exist - and Nothings which are made Great and dignified by an ardent pursuit -"
Our friends over at Atmospheric Quarterly would love the love and clouds bit so much! "Which require a greeting of the Spirit to make them wholly exist"! That's so great. And also the "Nothings" dignified by ardent pursuit.
I love that “space of joy and aliveness,” “the blaze of desire.” Our culture is so stuck on the idea of “success” being about the completion of something, the end result, that the space between doesn’t get the proper attention and isn’t celebrated. I was reminded on my camino that the joy of the journey was in every single step of the journey and not in the destination. The destination, the arriving, was actually sad, because it was an ending. This is one of the things I appreciate so much about Briggs is that each project is in conversation with the last, a continuing, which keeps her, and us, in the journey.
I also find these comments beautiful! And very moving. When I mentioned this read-along to a friend, she was curious about the difference between a read-along and a book club or group. After admitting that I don't really know :), I wondered whether read-alongs can place greater emphasis on process—commenting/sharing/being together all the way along as we're immersed together in these books, and not just at the end when we've finished (which, I feel already, Kim, will be a sadness! Because we'll be done!). And celebrating, as we connect, being exactly where we are in our reading/thinking/feeling about Kate Briggs and Barthes. As I side note, one of the things I'm loving so far is the slowness of our reading. I read This Little Art last summer in one gulp (which was also super pleasurable), but now I'm appreciating slowing down, noticing different things, feeling the spaciousness of Briggs' ideas and heart. And with the Barthes too, I'm appreciating the "not too much at once"-ness of the schedule, because though I'm excited about reading him I'm also intimidated!
Kasey! Your comment is so great! Is it okay with you if I copy parts of it into next week's newsletter? I love this question about what we are doing, because I'm not entirely clear on it either :) The closest model in my mind has been that of a course or seminar, but Kim and I are not experts in the area and have not done 50% of the reading, so that doesn't work. I know there are full-semester courses in reading books like Ulysses, so I guess it's kind of like that, but without any experts. I guess a cross between a book group and a leaderless seminar?
YES to the idea of placing emphasis on process, and also on togetherness in the process! Briggs's writing is so social in nature -- she brings in so many outside voices and ideas -- and so much about dialogue, so it seems natural to have a dialogue about her books. And she writes about the sociality of reading and thinking so much (as well as embodying it), that a social reading of her books seems in the right spirit. Thank you for giving me so much to think about!
Oh Rebecca, I'm so glad! Thank you! And yes of course, feel free to copy whatever parts you'd like into the newsletter. I love the idea of a leaderless seminar. And the sociality of reading/thinking: this does feel such a central part of Briggs' work, and I think it's one of the things I found so exciting and encouraging and warming about This Little Art. Now I'm thinking of the part of Nathalie Leger's introduction to the Barthes text in which she says (not an exact quote—the book is upstairs!) that his project, throughout his life and not just in these lectures, was about/toward a sort of literary utopia. I read that sentence and started to cry (surprising myself—I did not expect that reaction in reading the intro to what I think of as a quite scholarly text). I feel very excited about this venture of reading together, and kind of delighted that we don't exactly know what we're doing! :)
I'm so curious about what you and others think of that literary utopia -- what is it, and is it something we can currently dwell in, or something we work toward (where the point is the journey, not the goal)? I find the opening page of the Léger challenging to follow. But the last bit seems clearer: the program is "to learn nothing -- Barthes even says to *unlearn* -- and to undertake that long labor of rediscovery, that return, within each individual, of a soul that has been absent for too long."
Day 4 (p. 22-25): "And then it occurs to me: if the novel that Mann originally originally wrote in German has been translated, comprehensively, into English (since this is, after all, TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN, as the title page of my edition announces in full caps) then the long sections of French in this exchange can't have been translated at all" (23).
I love the delight Briggs seems to have -- or maybe I'm feeling delight for her -- in reading Mann's actual words, even if they are only the ones in French. How funny that everything else is translated, but those French words stay as they were in the original, or at least they do in that edition. Mann himself shines through for a moment. I like thinking about this kind of translation problem even though I'm mostly glad I don't have to make the decision about how to handle it, knowing that many people will critique any decision I made. Leave the French, translate with a note, use italics -- who knows what the best method is!
My favorite moment in Briggs's "Translator's Preface" is this: "But the fact that this personal writing project took the form of a teaching project, that the Work and the Course came to be 'invested in the same (literary) enterprise' leaves open--and even sets out to generate--the possibility that the story of The Preparation of the Novel is also YOURS." He is teaching us how to prepare to write a novel! Even though he hasn't actually written the novel. By reading this book, we can follow in Barthes's footsteps, set out on his quest (and maybe actually get the novel written?). But what does it mean to prepare to write a novel and what does Barthes mean by "the novel" -- no surprise, Briggs's discussion of the various possible meanings is great, and I love that these thoughts led her to translate the title literally.
I wrote a little in response to the Day 1 reading and thought I'd add it here:
What a sexy opening to This Little Art! It’s carnival and Hans Castorp from The Magic Mountain is “hot and reckless.” He realizes he was foolish for thinking it was the gauzy illusion of Frau Chauchat’s arm that was beautiful; what is beautiful — ravishing — is the arm itself. All he can do is whisper “Oh my God.” They flirt over a pencil.
And then language gets in the way. She’s exasperated with this inability to follow her French and asks him, “more impersonally,” to speak in German.
And then we move out of the world of The Magic Mountain and into Kate Briggs’s room where she is reading and writing, thinking about how this conversation from a German novel is rendered: “Hans Castorp replies in English. Clavdia Chauchat has asked him, pointedly, in French, to address her in German, and his reply is written for me in English.” Briggs’s accepts this: “And I go with it. I do. Of course I do. I willingly accept these terms. Positively and very gladly in fact.”
The sexy scene is gone, disrupted by a language failure, but now we get another relationship, that between author, translator, and reader. This relationship is about acceptance and submission: I will render this novel intelligible to you, says the translator, if you accept a strange premise: Castorp must be speaking German, but you will see it in English. And the reader, Kate, says yes.
And so we begin This Little Art with communication through negotiation — I will speak to you about pencils if you use the language I ask; you can read this novel if you allow a certain lack of logic and consistency.
random memory stuck in my brain: I was a teaching assistant for the great Helene Cixous back in the '90s at Northwestern and in response to a student question about how to fight or be an activist, she held up her dainty (silver?) pen and said: "This is my weapon!" (I think we were talking phalluses and so she might have said this was her phallus, but I think she said weapon).
My grad school experience was a bit magic mountainy anyway: before I descended into the reality of academic precarity bc I just wasn't a good publisher. I didn't perish but survived on a lower level.
You know, I don't fully understand this platform either, so I sympathize! (I'm wondering what notes are and how they are different from chat, for example. I think I will mostly ignore both things.) Your plan sounds great.
Day 3 (This Little Art, p 18-21). "There's something from the outset speculative and, I would say, of the novelistic about the translator's project, whatever the genre of writing she is writing in" (18).
"The translator asks us to go with the English of Joachim's greeting, the English of Barthes's lecture, in much -- or is it exactly? -- the same way as the fiction-writer asks us to credit the lake just visible from the station; to see rather than query the grey waters, how the firs on its shores are dense and then thin." (18).
These passages are what stuck out to me from today's section, and Briggs's question -- "or is it exactly?" -- is provocative. I guess I might answer "yes": we are asked in both instances to believe things that aren't true, to believe in alternative worlds (I love how Briggs has mentioned both fantasy and the speculative so far). Generally this is pretty easy for me. I am not someone who hesitates to read in translation out of worry that I will miss things or that it's hard to judge the book's quality because I'm not reading the original. I'm inclined to trust translators. I feel the magic Briggs mentions on p. 19 and I get caught up in it and read easily.
And, to be honest, coming across untranslated French phrases wouldn't bother me much either. I am not a French reader, but I would get the meaning from context or just feel okay about not completely understanding. I would not work as hard as the guy who wants the French translated is willing to work! Perhaps I'm a lazy reader, but also, maybe, I wouldn't mind missing the French for the same reason I don't mind reading in translation -- I know I won't get everything and accept that. I won't get everything no matter what language it's in, no matter how carefully I read.
I underlined the same passages and I love that provocative “or is it exactly?” I’m the same, I trust the translator & I often don’t look up untranslated phrases. Part of that might be that I think we’re both selective about the translations that we read so there’s already an inherent trust, but also it’s just the nature of reading translated works for me. Honestly, I think it would take too much energy to question everything, lol. I’d rather spend that energy grappling with other things. I love how she flows between her own thoughts, Barthes, Magic Mountain, Sontag's Reader, online conversations -- she weaves an enticing, stirring tapestry.
I am loving the Kate Briggs! I realise I’ve been having part of this conversation about translation in my own head as I wrestle with Greek every week. First the clumsy, awkward, difficult literal translation. Then ‘but how would we say that now?’ If we would say that now. And if not, what is the approximation I can get to and how far from the original can I stray?
Absolutely there is a suspension of disbelief required to read a translation, and the reader must trust the translator. I find translations so hard to read because a jarring phrase can break the suspension of disbelief.
I'm so glad you're loving the book! I rather desperately want to practice translation myself, but the work! I mean, the work would be a pleasure, so it's more about the time. I know how hard you have been working on Greek for a long time now.
Your point about trust is, I think, why I've become fans of particular translators and will read whatever they decide to translate. It's a matter of trusting their translating abilities, but also -- at least if they are at the point where they can pick their own translation projects -- what they choose to work on. I trust their ability and also their taste.
Yes, even just doing it for fun, it’s a commitment. It’s rewarding (maddening, frustrating, humbling…), Greek is probably the ultimate slow read for me!
I can completely see why you would feel in safe hands with a particular translator.
It's only been in the last few years that I've really dialed into the work of specific translators, and like publishers, I agree, I will read whatever they translate. And for the translators on that list who get to pick their own projects, I'm completely fascinated by their choices.
I guess I can post here on my initial thoughts on the very first set of readings?
I'm very much compelled by the beginning of _This Little Art_. The text jumps right into _Magic Mountain_ and I almost lose my breath! The initial description of Frau Chauchat and her bare arms evokes for me Barthes' own explorations of sensuality and pornography in _Camera Lucida_, where he writes about how the fabric of clothes is more compelling than nudity. Here, though, Castorp is so enamoured with the "gauze" over those arms (that he saw before) the he is literally ecstatic with the bare arms.
Page 14 is interesting in mapping out the complexity of language in literature. Here we have German, French, English, all being used (some at the forefront--the text we're reading--and a lot "behind the scenes"). It shows a bit of the complex mediation that we as the readers need to contend with.
Regarding the opening notes of the Barthes lectures, I think what stands out is the finality of these presentations (at the unexpected end of his life) and the rhythm of them. I was struck by the idea of "literary utopia," which Léger describes as "to know nothing of the object sought, simply to know something of oneself." (xvii) What an interesting idea.
One last thing: I knew that Barthes used fountain pens, but I didn't know he kept a ballpoint with him at all times because of its utility!
I'm so glad you posted your thoughts, Nicholas! I've been writing a bit about the opening for the next newsletter, and I, too, am fascinated by how compelling the opening scene is -- and how it sets up the ideas the book plays with later on. I love how it moves from the scene in the novel to a scene of Briggs reading the novel and thinking about that reading and how odd reading translations is, and how both scenes are about the "complex mediation" you write about here. Briggs sets up so many layers in the first four pages.
Day 5 (Briggs, p. 26-28): I love how at least three sections of This Little Art so far have ended with some variation of "What do you do?" or "What else are you going to do?" I feel the translator's very real struggle with decision-making here. Briggs is dramatizing the decision-making process, and I love that it takes up quite a lot of pages, so we really FEEL the complexity of the problem and how hard it is to decide.
I think Briggs uses repetition very effectively -- repetition in the context of the short sections with lots of white space, so the pacing feels perfect. There's repetition, but it's spread out, with space in between each variation of the question for Briggs to explore new angles on it, and for the reader to spend time thinking about it.
Hi all! Thanks to everyone for all these comments thus far. Plenty of quotes and ideas that have similarly intrigued me. And I’m glad to be back with THIS LITTLE ART, something that I lingered with for a while almost one year ago. I think it was Nicholas a few comments back that talked about the change of text that almost took his breath away. I think there’s a kinetic energy to Briggs’ text that I find fascinating. The changes never feel erratic because of that mimicry of thought movements.
And to think about The Preparation of the Novel as a “culmination” of Barthes’ works in a sense is very exciting, as much as it stands as plans for something that never comes to fruition. But that “will to fulfillment that blazes,” as you quoted Rebecca, seems enough.
I love your point about kinetic energy — that’s something I want to keep thinking about, and I know it’s something Briggs works hard at, sequencing, transitions, page breaks, etc. How to juggle all the balls she has up in the air.
Day 2: I really like the idea of Barthes saying that his body is "historical" and that he is older than his 61 years back in 1977. What does it mean to become contemporary with his students? What does it mean for Barthes to "begin again"? I assume this is linked to "vita nova," which is part of The Preparation of the Novel. I also really like Barthes' humility or self-effacing nature (and hopefully not too much of a lack of self-esteem); he calls himself a "fellow of doubtful nature," and that gives me hope!
I appreciate the self-doubt as well. The idea of his body being historical kind of blows my mind -- I guess his body contains traces of the historical (tuberculosis), and now, being contemporary with his students, breathing the same air, occupying the same space -- his body has a history that encompasses more years than he has lived. And Briggs is bringing Barthes's words into her own body as well as she reads and listens to his voice in the lectures. Wild!
It's so wild! I love what you both wrote about this idea of the historical body—which is making me think about time and Barthes (and us too) being both the age he "really is" (or the age others would consider him to be, the number of years he's lived on the planet) and many other ages, too, all at once: as Rebecca pointed out, both contemporaneous with Hans Castorp *and* with his students, so, both old and young; and young, too, in the sense of completely beginning again in his middle age, completely starting afresh. I think I'm just re-saying what you both have already said so well, but I'm fascinated and moved by this shifty sort of time, the way it can't be pinned down, the way it's many things at once. I'm also really moved by this notion of beginning again, unlearning, complete newness—and the idea of choosing these things deliberately, being *able* to make that choice.
The historical body and tuberculosis stuff makes me think about The Second Body (I'm always thinking about this book) and the connectedness of bodies, which we usually deny or ignore. I hadn't thought before of one's body extending through time, although of course it does -- we all have ancient DNA in us, e.g.
And the beginning again idea makes me think of the first sentence of The Long Form (I'm always thinking about this sentence): "The beginning of each new project was always a continuation." I suppose the reverse is true: to continue a project, we must always be beginning again, and here the emphasis is on choosing to begin again and again, choosing to unlearn and become new.
I really want to read The Second Body (I actually own it, but haven't gotten to it yet)—and now I'm even more eager. Yes to this! Love: the emphasis on choosing to begin again and again. Feels like such deep encouragement.
The Second Body is SO rewarding, and it feels somehow related to Briggs's writing -- perhaps only loosely and maybe only in my own mind, but they feel similar in spirit.
I recently got a CT scan done for heart health, but the report contained every other thing they noticed in the process, including a nodule on my lungs that they diagnosed--through this one picture!--as being the product of a childhood fungal infection, which they further diagnosed as being a result of a genetic disease I didn't know I had. As a footnote they included this history of my body, and not only that, but of my ancestors. They read in my photograph the years I spent swimming in muddy ditches in Louisiana!
Wowwww, what an experience. I LOVE that they could "read" your history -- and your ancestor's history -- in your living, current body. This is even better than telling stories through scars :)
Day 3: Briggs again explains the mediation that happens between the author and the reader, a mediation performed by the translator. She that that "what was _really_ said or written, gets suspended, slightly." (18) What I find interesting here is that Briggs is writing about herself, the translator of Barthes' lectures! Then, on p19. Briggs shows us yet another interesting switch of language in Mann: the translation makes the novel a _writerly_ text. The translator becomes an author!
By the way, thanks for putting up with my blathering on!
Nicholas -- I'm thrilled with your comments! My dream is that people will comment at length whenever they are inspired to, so please always feel free. I love how Briggs narrates her experience of all the roles involved -- what it's like to be reader grappling with reading a translation, what it's like to be in her study writing that experience, and, by implication, what it means to be a translator (and more on that explicitly later). So much overlap and shifting around of these roles.
Day 6 (Briggs, pp29-31): I absolutely love how she returns to the opening scene of her book, with the gauze and the arms, etc. This is particularly satisfying, and we have a recognition of a second author, that is, the one doing the translation.
Barthes. session of Dec 2/78: I certainly appreciate how Barthes finds himself to be past middle-aged (though such a determination is impossible)--I turned 50 last month. He goes on to say that he has a certain amount of time left, and he has spent enough time in repetition, so he needs to change, to embark on a "Grand Project," a _vita nova_. He even suggests that he thought he'd retire to write full-time and forsake the lecture. Of course, this is what he's doing instead, lecturing, a medium that dies (though, now that it's in a book, it sticks around!). He then defines something important, I think: to want-to-write. This desire is central.
I love that he had a sort of epiphany on April 15, 1978: that he would write!
Finally, a favourite quote: "writing serves as a salvation, as a means to vanquish Death: not his own, but the death of loved ones; a way of bearing witness for them, of perpetuating them by drawing them out of non-Memory." (9)
I turn 50 this month :) I loved following his thoughts on what can happen at this age, how one might respond to it, how HE wants to respond to it -- I love his line "to change ideas is banal; it's as natural as breathing." What has to change is the PRACTICE of writing -- he wants a new method. To DO something different instead of BELIEVING something different (although one will probably lead to the other at some point?). Who knows where a new writing practice will take a person!
I'm 55 (btw, happy early birthday, Rebecca!) and so I also am drawn to, and moved by, Barthes' discussion of middle age, the question of what can still be possible, what can (and perhaps must) change, and how that process might occur. One of the many things I'm so struck by in the Barthes (I just finished the first session, Dec. 2, this morning) is how moving I find almost all of it. I don't know what I expected, exactly—probably that this text would engage my head but not necessarily my heart (I know they're not separate, or not always separate! But still...). And instead the text feels profoundly heartful to me, and I regularly find myself tearing up, and needing to copy passages into my notebook so I can keep them close (this reminds me of Kate Briggs, in TLA, talking about the desire to literally re-inscribe a beloved text by copying it—and the relationship of this to translation—but this comes later in the book!). What Barthes writes about feels so human and real and close—not the lofty, kind of chilly, purely intellectual stuff I was imagining.
Thank you, Kasey! :) I so agree about the Barthes -- I will sit down with the second session soon and am curious if his tone stays the same throughout. I love how he tells a personal story about his epiphany and then announces that he's going to describe his epiphany in a theoretical, philosophical way. It's so great to get both "versions" of this, and I love how he announces what he plans to do. I joke about feeling attacked by Barthes's thoughts on midlife, but I found them meaningful and inspiring.
I'm also really moved by that quote about writing as salvation, Nicholas, and also by doing (instead of believing) differently, Rebecca. And I think I'm also moved by the "we-ness" of the Barthes text. Which I know was a big part of the inspiration for this read-along! And it still surprises me!—the way he's so clearly including his students and listeners, inviting them so warmly on this journey of new life/new writing practice with him. In fact, he seems to just assume that of course that's so: they're all in it together (and we, as readers, are in it together with Barthes, his students—which comes back to the idea of contemporaneous bodies possibly separated in some ways by time but also profoundly connected by or through time). I don't think I ever felt that as a student: that my teachers or professors were inviting me into a process with them—I loved being a student but it felt so much more binary: teachers/professors in one place, doing one thing, and the rest of us students in another place and doing something related but basically different and separate.
I'm so curious about the teacher/student relationship here -- my question is, what are the students meant to learn? what did they expect to get out of this? Also, this makes me think about how I can invite my own students into a process, how I can break down that binary, at least in some ways.
I'm curious about this too—and I'll be curious to hear what ideas you (and the other teachers in the group too?) come up with re inviting students into a process—love that you are thinking about this.
I'm currently doing a workshop at my school (a community college) on helping students with their reading, and we have talked about discussing their and our own reading practices and experiences, to get them thinking metacognitively about it and to encourage them to see how they can improve through working on it (it's not that they can or can't read well, it's that we're all working on our abilities, at all levels). So I will definitely be talking about my experience reading Barthes! Because I LOVE it so far, but I do not understand everything; it takes me a long time to read him, I have to reread him frequently, I skip ahead to see what's coming up and whether that will help me understand, and then I go back to fill in the gaps, etc. etc. This is not inviting students into my process, exactly, but it is sharing it with them.
In Barthes' January 13, 1979 lecture on haiku, he describes the mathematical combinations possible within the constraints of haiku. "The number of possibilities is reduced, whence the collections of thousands of haiku, enabling the poet to check that his composition hasn't already been composed by someone else--> Essentially a board game, but what's at stake is not a dull performance (crosswords, Scrabble) but a *vibration* of the world." I was immediately reminded that there is a game--the type that he would call a "dull performance"--made from Japanese poetry.
The game is 歌ガルタ - Uta-garuta ("garuta" is borrowed from the Portuguese *carta*), literally translated into "Poetry Cards." Each match has an official reader, and players who are either competing separately or in teams. 100 cards featuring poems are shuffled for the reader and another 100 cards with only the final two lines of the poems are laid out on the floor. The reader pulls a card from their stack and begins to read the poem. Their pace and enunciation influence the gameplay, because different pacing can make a poem seem like an entirely different piece. The players compete to be the first to grab the card on the floor that matches the poem being read. In some cases the first syllable is unique, so the player only needs to memorize the first syllable and last line. The poem is reduced to a single noise which in isolation has its own meaning. For other poems, the player must wait, tensed, for the first line to drip from the reader's mouth. (like drops from a thatched roof... we'll get to that shortly)
The most common deck used is called *Hyakunin Isshu*, or One Hundred Poems from One Hundred Poets. The poems are not haikus; each poem has five lines, with a rhythm of 5-7-5-7-7, a popular format that preceded the haiku by centuries. They do not meet Barthe's particular criteria for haiku, but I think he would appreciated some of them, like this 7th century poem:
秋の田の
かりほの庵の
苫をあらみ
わが衣手は
露にぬれつつ
Coarse the rush-mat roof
Sheltering the harvest-hut
Of the autumn rice-field;
And my sleeves are growing wet
With the moisture dripping through.
This translation is "a revised version" of the translation by Clay McCauley in 1917. I do not know who "revised" it; I found it on a website dedicated to the *Hyakunin Isshu* (https://jti.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/hyakunin/frames/hyakuframes.html). My translation, in which I deliberately make it more haiku-like:
(I think I hit a character limit, so carrying on...)
秋の田の
かりほの庵の
苫をあらみ
わが衣手は
露にぬれつつ
Coarse the rush-mat roof
Sheltering the harvest-hut
Of the autumn rice-field;
And my sleeves are growing wet
With the moisture dripping through.
This translation is "a revised version" of the translation by Clay McCauley in 1917. I do not know who "revised" it; I found it on a website dedicated to the *Hyakunin Isshu* (https://jti.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/hyakunin/frames/hyakuframes.html). My translation, in which I deliberately make it more haiku-like:
Thank you for this, Sara! I love this. I haven't read the Haiku section yet, but I love the idea of mathematical combinations possible in Haiku and his phrase "a *vibration* of the world" is great. Maybe Uta-garuta would be something Barthes would call a "dull performance," but I'm intrigued by it.
Day 2 reading on Briggs:
Briggs’s introduction of Barthes (as translated by Richard Howard) into This Little Art introduces the idea of fantasy: “I sincerely believe that at the origin of teaching such as this we must always locate a fantasy, which can vary from year to year” (16). The context of this quotation is Barthes beginning a lecture series, and its placement in a section that comes right after the translation discussion sets up a connection between the fantasy involved in reading translation and the fantasy of the classroom and lecture hall: that the bodies of all those involved are contemporary. Barthes has learned his body is historical (he had the old form of tuberculosis), but he will pretend it’s contemporary with his students. We know The Magic Mountain is in German, but we will pretend everyone in it is speaking English.
I associate the word “fantasy” with fakery and illusion, but the fantasy here is very real: it’s based on a communal decision to work together. And, in a move that I love, Briggs is careful to bring the body into it (she follows Barthes in this): even though she was born after Barthes’s lecture was delivered, she is experiencing it and making it her contemporary through her physical experience of it.
Day 1 reading on Barthes:
As I read the Editor’s Preface by Nathalie Léger in Barthes’s The Preparation of the Novel, I was fascinated by this quotation from Barthes: “I’m not actually bothered about my chances of being fulfilled IN REAL TERMS (I don’t mind that they’re nonexistent). It’s just the will to fulfillment that blazes, that’s indestructible” (xxii). This is a quotation from A Lover’s Discourse, but in the context of the preface, it’s about the question of whether Barthes really wanted to write a novel or not. It’s tragic that Barthes’s death came so soon after The Preparation of the Novel, so we can never know whether the novel would have been written had he lived. But, as he says here, he’s not bothered about his chances of fulfillment. Instead, it’s all about desire. I agree that desire is the thing that matters, the space of joy and aliveness. That’s what I tell myself when I long for something to happen — it’s the longing that matters, not the thing happening — but I don’t really believe it. I tell myself that to make myself feel better. I suppose I know it to be true intellectually, but not in my bones. I feel that Barthes might know it in his bones, though. He seems like the kind of person who might dwell happily in the blaze of desire. What matters for him is the preparation, the planning, the book we have before us.
After reading this, I couldn't help but think a passage by Keats about pursuit; he noted that "every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardor of the pursuer - being in itself a nothing -" and this goes along so well with Barthes' not needing fulfillment but rather the will to fulfillment, that blazing and ardent desire.
it is such a terrible shame that he passed away before writing his novel but like you said, it really wasn't about the finished product! Which is such a hopeful and liberating thing.
That's a wonderful connection to Keats.
It's such a fascinating quote. Here's a bit more. I love how he classes Love and Clouds together.
"As Tradesmen say every thing is worth what it will fetch, so probably every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardor of the pursuer - being in itself a nothing - Ethereal things may at least be thus real, divided under three heads - Things real - things semireal - and no things. Things real - such as existences of Sun Moon & Stars and passages of Shakspeare. Things semi-real such as Love, the Clouds &c which require a greeting of the Spirit to make them wholly exist - and Nothings which are made Great and dignified by an ardent pursuit -"
Our friends over at Atmospheric Quarterly would love the love and clouds bit so much! "Which require a greeting of the Spirit to make them wholly exist"! That's so great. And also the "Nothings" dignified by ardent pursuit.
We're about to encounter Barthes talking about the weather and clouds a lot too.
Oh WE ARE? I'm very into clouds (spend relatively a lot of time outside staring at the sky) so this is good news.
I love that “space of joy and aliveness,” “the blaze of desire.” Our culture is so stuck on the idea of “success” being about the completion of something, the end result, that the space between doesn’t get the proper attention and isn’t celebrated. I was reminded on my camino that the joy of the journey was in every single step of the journey and not in the destination. The destination, the arriving, was actually sad, because it was an ending. This is one of the things I appreciate so much about Briggs is that each project is in conversation with the last, a continuing, which keeps her, and us, in the journey.
Your comment is beautiful, Kim! Yes, the arriving is an ending, and it's going through the thing that changes a person, not finishing a thing.
I also find these comments beautiful! And very moving. When I mentioned this read-along to a friend, she was curious about the difference between a read-along and a book club or group. After admitting that I don't really know :), I wondered whether read-alongs can place greater emphasis on process—commenting/sharing/being together all the way along as we're immersed together in these books, and not just at the end when we've finished (which, I feel already, Kim, will be a sadness! Because we'll be done!). And celebrating, as we connect, being exactly where we are in our reading/thinking/feeling about Kate Briggs and Barthes. As I side note, one of the things I'm loving so far is the slowness of our reading. I read This Little Art last summer in one gulp (which was also super pleasurable), but now I'm appreciating slowing down, noticing different things, feeling the spaciousness of Briggs' ideas and heart. And with the Barthes too, I'm appreciating the "not too much at once"-ness of the schedule, because though I'm excited about reading him I'm also intimidated!
Kasey! Your comment is so great! Is it okay with you if I copy parts of it into next week's newsletter? I love this question about what we are doing, because I'm not entirely clear on it either :) The closest model in my mind has been that of a course or seminar, but Kim and I are not experts in the area and have not done 50% of the reading, so that doesn't work. I know there are full-semester courses in reading books like Ulysses, so I guess it's kind of like that, but without any experts. I guess a cross between a book group and a leaderless seminar?
YES to the idea of placing emphasis on process, and also on togetherness in the process! Briggs's writing is so social in nature -- she brings in so many outside voices and ideas -- and so much about dialogue, so it seems natural to have a dialogue about her books. And she writes about the sociality of reading and thinking so much (as well as embodying it), that a social reading of her books seems in the right spirit. Thank you for giving me so much to think about!
Oh Rebecca, I'm so glad! Thank you! And yes of course, feel free to copy whatever parts you'd like into the newsletter. I love the idea of a leaderless seminar. And the sociality of reading/thinking: this does feel such a central part of Briggs' work, and I think it's one of the things I found so exciting and encouraging and warming about This Little Art. Now I'm thinking of the part of Nathalie Leger's introduction to the Barthes text in which she says (not an exact quote—the book is upstairs!) that his project, throughout his life and not just in these lectures, was about/toward a sort of literary utopia. I read that sentence and started to cry (surprising myself—I did not expect that reaction in reading the intro to what I think of as a quite scholarly text). I feel very excited about this venture of reading together, and kind of delighted that we don't exactly know what we're doing! :)
I'm so curious about what you and others think of that literary utopia -- what is it, and is it something we can currently dwell in, or something we work toward (where the point is the journey, not the goal)? I find the opening page of the Léger challenging to follow. But the last bit seems clearer: the program is "to learn nothing -- Barthes even says to *unlearn* -- and to undertake that long labor of rediscovery, that return, within each individual, of a soul that has been absent for too long."
Day 4 (p. 22-25): "And then it occurs to me: if the novel that Mann originally originally wrote in German has been translated, comprehensively, into English (since this is, after all, TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN, as the title page of my edition announces in full caps) then the long sections of French in this exchange can't have been translated at all" (23).
I love the delight Briggs seems to have -- or maybe I'm feeling delight for her -- in reading Mann's actual words, even if they are only the ones in French. How funny that everything else is translated, but those French words stay as they were in the original, or at least they do in that edition. Mann himself shines through for a moment. I like thinking about this kind of translation problem even though I'm mostly glad I don't have to make the decision about how to handle it, knowing that many people will critique any decision I made. Leave the French, translate with a note, use italics -- who knows what the best method is!
My favorite moment in Briggs's "Translator's Preface" is this: "But the fact that this personal writing project took the form of a teaching project, that the Work and the Course came to be 'invested in the same (literary) enterprise' leaves open--and even sets out to generate--the possibility that the story of The Preparation of the Novel is also YOURS." He is teaching us how to prepare to write a novel! Even though he hasn't actually written the novel. By reading this book, we can follow in Barthes's footsteps, set out on his quest (and maybe actually get the novel written?). But what does it mean to prepare to write a novel and what does Barthes mean by "the novel" -- no surprise, Briggs's discussion of the various possible meanings is great, and I love that these thoughts led her to translate the title literally.
I wrote a little in response to the Day 1 reading and thought I'd add it here:
What a sexy opening to This Little Art! It’s carnival and Hans Castorp from The Magic Mountain is “hot and reckless.” He realizes he was foolish for thinking it was the gauzy illusion of Frau Chauchat’s arm that was beautiful; what is beautiful — ravishing — is the arm itself. All he can do is whisper “Oh my God.” They flirt over a pencil.
And then language gets in the way. She’s exasperated with this inability to follow her French and asks him, “more impersonally,” to speak in German.
And then we move out of the world of The Magic Mountain and into Kate Briggs’s room where she is reading and writing, thinking about how this conversation from a German novel is rendered: “Hans Castorp replies in English. Clavdia Chauchat has asked him, pointedly, in French, to address her in German, and his reply is written for me in English.” Briggs’s accepts this: “And I go with it. I do. Of course I do. I willingly accept these terms. Positively and very gladly in fact.”
The sexy scene is gone, disrupted by a language failure, but now we get another relationship, that between author, translator, and reader. This relationship is about acceptance and submission: I will render this novel intelligible to you, says the translator, if you accept a strange premise: Castorp must be speaking German, but you will see it in English. And the reader, Kate, says yes.
And so we begin This Little Art with communication through negotiation — I will speak to you about pencils if you use the language I ask; you can read this novel if you allow a certain lack of logic and consistency.
random memory stuck in my brain: I was a teaching assistant for the great Helene Cixous back in the '90s at Northwestern and in response to a student question about how to fight or be an activist, she held up her dainty (silver?) pen and said: "This is my weapon!" (I think we were talking phalluses and so she might have said this was her phallus, but I think she said weapon).
Wait, you were a teaching assistant for Helene Cixous???? That's amazing. The image of Cixous holding up a pen and saying that line is wonderful.
she was very theatrical, in appearance and presentation. very memorable experience!
I'll BET it was memorable! I'm just a bit (very) jealous.
I'm still stuck on the fact that you were a teaching assistant for Helene Cixous! How amazing!
My grad school experience was a bit magic mountainy anyway: before I descended into the reality of academic precarity bc I just wasn't a good publisher. I didn't perish but survived on a lower level.
Enjoying all the comments. I will continue to lurk or make token statements till I get the Barthes.
By that time I might be more comfortable with platform.
You know, I don't fully understand this platform either, so I sympathize! (I'm wondering what notes are and how they are different from chat, for example. I think I will mostly ignore both things.) Your plan sounds great.
Day 3 (This Little Art, p 18-21). "There's something from the outset speculative and, I would say, of the novelistic about the translator's project, whatever the genre of writing she is writing in" (18).
"The translator asks us to go with the English of Joachim's greeting, the English of Barthes's lecture, in much -- or is it exactly? -- the same way as the fiction-writer asks us to credit the lake just visible from the station; to see rather than query the grey waters, how the firs on its shores are dense and then thin." (18).
These passages are what stuck out to me from today's section, and Briggs's question -- "or is it exactly?" -- is provocative. I guess I might answer "yes": we are asked in both instances to believe things that aren't true, to believe in alternative worlds (I love how Briggs has mentioned both fantasy and the speculative so far). Generally this is pretty easy for me. I am not someone who hesitates to read in translation out of worry that I will miss things or that it's hard to judge the book's quality because I'm not reading the original. I'm inclined to trust translators. I feel the magic Briggs mentions on p. 19 and I get caught up in it and read easily.
And, to be honest, coming across untranslated French phrases wouldn't bother me much either. I am not a French reader, but I would get the meaning from context or just feel okay about not completely understanding. I would not work as hard as the guy who wants the French translated is willing to work! Perhaps I'm a lazy reader, but also, maybe, I wouldn't mind missing the French for the same reason I don't mind reading in translation -- I know I won't get everything and accept that. I won't get everything no matter what language it's in, no matter how carefully I read.
I underlined the same passages and I love that provocative “or is it exactly?” I’m the same, I trust the translator & I often don’t look up untranslated phrases. Part of that might be that I think we’re both selective about the translations that we read so there’s already an inherent trust, but also it’s just the nature of reading translated works for me. Honestly, I think it would take too much energy to question everything, lol. I’d rather spend that energy grappling with other things. I love how she flows between her own thoughts, Barthes, Magic Mountain, Sontag's Reader, online conversations -- she weaves an enticing, stirring tapestry.
I am loving the Kate Briggs! I realise I’ve been having part of this conversation about translation in my own head as I wrestle with Greek every week. First the clumsy, awkward, difficult literal translation. Then ‘but how would we say that now?’ If we would say that now. And if not, what is the approximation I can get to and how far from the original can I stray?
Absolutely there is a suspension of disbelief required to read a translation, and the reader must trust the translator. I find translations so hard to read because a jarring phrase can break the suspension of disbelief.
I'm so glad you're loving the book! I rather desperately want to practice translation myself, but the work! I mean, the work would be a pleasure, so it's more about the time. I know how hard you have been working on Greek for a long time now.
Your point about trust is, I think, why I've become fans of particular translators and will read whatever they decide to translate. It's a matter of trusting their translating abilities, but also -- at least if they are at the point where they can pick their own translation projects -- what they choose to work on. I trust their ability and also their taste.
Yes, even just doing it for fun, it’s a commitment. It’s rewarding (maddening, frustrating, humbling…), Greek is probably the ultimate slow read for me!
I can completely see why you would feel in safe hands with a particular translator.
It's only been in the last few years that I've really dialed into the work of specific translators, and like publishers, I agree, I will read whatever they translate. And for the translators on that list who get to pick their own projects, I'm completely fascinated by their choices.
I want to study ancient Greek so much! #retirementplans
Do it!
I guess I can post here on my initial thoughts on the very first set of readings?
I'm very much compelled by the beginning of _This Little Art_. The text jumps right into _Magic Mountain_ and I almost lose my breath! The initial description of Frau Chauchat and her bare arms evokes for me Barthes' own explorations of sensuality and pornography in _Camera Lucida_, where he writes about how the fabric of clothes is more compelling than nudity. Here, though, Castorp is so enamoured with the "gauze" over those arms (that he saw before) the he is literally ecstatic with the bare arms.
Page 14 is interesting in mapping out the complexity of language in literature. Here we have German, French, English, all being used (some at the forefront--the text we're reading--and a lot "behind the scenes"). It shows a bit of the complex mediation that we as the readers need to contend with.
Regarding the opening notes of the Barthes lectures, I think what stands out is the finality of these presentations (at the unexpected end of his life) and the rhythm of them. I was struck by the idea of "literary utopia," which Léger describes as "to know nothing of the object sought, simply to know something of oneself." (xvii) What an interesting idea.
One last thing: I knew that Barthes used fountain pens, but I didn't know he kept a ballpoint with him at all times because of its utility!
I'm so glad you posted your thoughts, Nicholas! I've been writing a bit about the opening for the next newsletter, and I, too, am fascinated by how compelling the opening scene is -- and how it sets up the ideas the book plays with later on. I love how it moves from the scene in the novel to a scene of Briggs reading the novel and thinking about that reading and how odd reading translations is, and how both scenes are about the "complex mediation" you write about here. Briggs sets up so many layers in the first four pages.
Day 5 (Briggs, p. 26-28): I love how at least three sections of This Little Art so far have ended with some variation of "What do you do?" or "What else are you going to do?" I feel the translator's very real struggle with decision-making here. Briggs is dramatizing the decision-making process, and I love that it takes up quite a lot of pages, so we really FEEL the complexity of the problem and how hard it is to decide.
I think Briggs uses repetition very effectively -- repetition in the context of the short sections with lots of white space, so the pacing feels perfect. There's repetition, but it's spread out, with space in between each variation of the question for Briggs to explore new angles on it, and for the reader to spend time thinking about it.
Hi all! Thanks to everyone for all these comments thus far. Plenty of quotes and ideas that have similarly intrigued me. And I’m glad to be back with THIS LITTLE ART, something that I lingered with for a while almost one year ago. I think it was Nicholas a few comments back that talked about the change of text that almost took his breath away. I think there’s a kinetic energy to Briggs’ text that I find fascinating. The changes never feel erratic because of that mimicry of thought movements.
And to think about The Preparation of the Novel as a “culmination” of Barthes’ works in a sense is very exciting, as much as it stands as plans for something that never comes to fruition. But that “will to fulfillment that blazes,” as you quoted Rebecca, seems enough.
I love your point about kinetic energy — that’s something I want to keep thinking about, and I know it’s something Briggs works hard at, sequencing, transitions, page breaks, etc. How to juggle all the balls she has up in the air.
Day 2: I really like the idea of Barthes saying that his body is "historical" and that he is older than his 61 years back in 1977. What does it mean to become contemporary with his students? What does it mean for Barthes to "begin again"? I assume this is linked to "vita nova," which is part of The Preparation of the Novel. I also really like Barthes' humility or self-effacing nature (and hopefully not too much of a lack of self-esteem); he calls himself a "fellow of doubtful nature," and that gives me hope!
I appreciate the self-doubt as well. The idea of his body being historical kind of blows my mind -- I guess his body contains traces of the historical (tuberculosis), and now, being contemporary with his students, breathing the same air, occupying the same space -- his body has a history that encompasses more years than he has lived. And Briggs is bringing Barthes's words into her own body as well as she reads and listens to his voice in the lectures. Wild!
It's so wild! I love what you both wrote about this idea of the historical body—which is making me think about time and Barthes (and us too) being both the age he "really is" (or the age others would consider him to be, the number of years he's lived on the planet) and many other ages, too, all at once: as Rebecca pointed out, both contemporaneous with Hans Castorp *and* with his students, so, both old and young; and young, too, in the sense of completely beginning again in his middle age, completely starting afresh. I think I'm just re-saying what you both have already said so well, but I'm fascinated and moved by this shifty sort of time, the way it can't be pinned down, the way it's many things at once. I'm also really moved by this notion of beginning again, unlearning, complete newness—and the idea of choosing these things deliberately, being *able* to make that choice.
The historical body and tuberculosis stuff makes me think about The Second Body (I'm always thinking about this book) and the connectedness of bodies, which we usually deny or ignore. I hadn't thought before of one's body extending through time, although of course it does -- we all have ancient DNA in us, e.g.
And the beginning again idea makes me think of the first sentence of The Long Form (I'm always thinking about this sentence): "The beginning of each new project was always a continuation." I suppose the reverse is true: to continue a project, we must always be beginning again, and here the emphasis is on choosing to begin again and again, choosing to unlearn and become new.
I really want to read The Second Body (I actually own it, but haven't gotten to it yet)—and now I'm even more eager. Yes to this! Love: the emphasis on choosing to begin again and again. Feels like such deep encouragement.
The Second Body is SO rewarding, and it feels somehow related to Briggs's writing -- perhaps only loosely and maybe only in my own mind, but they feel similar in spirit.
I recently got a CT scan done for heart health, but the report contained every other thing they noticed in the process, including a nodule on my lungs that they diagnosed--through this one picture!--as being the product of a childhood fungal infection, which they further diagnosed as being a result of a genetic disease I didn't know I had. As a footnote they included this history of my body, and not only that, but of my ancestors. They read in my photograph the years I spent swimming in muddy ditches in Louisiana!
Wowwww, what an experience. I LOVE that they could "read" your history -- and your ancestor's history -- in your living, current body. This is even better than telling stories through scars :)
YAY
NEED TO GET AHOLD OF PREPARATION
LIT TO READ
BRINGING THE ALL CAPS ENTHUSIASM RIGHT HERE TO THE SUBSTACKSPACE
THAT'S WHAT WE LOVE TO SEE!!!!
Day 3: Briggs again explains the mediation that happens between the author and the reader, a mediation performed by the translator. She that that "what was _really_ said or written, gets suspended, slightly." (18) What I find interesting here is that Briggs is writing about herself, the translator of Barthes' lectures! Then, on p19. Briggs shows us yet another interesting switch of language in Mann: the translation makes the novel a _writerly_ text. The translator becomes an author!
By the way, thanks for putting up with my blathering on!
Nicholas -- I'm thrilled with your comments! My dream is that people will comment at length whenever they are inspired to, so please always feel free. I love how Briggs narrates her experience of all the roles involved -- what it's like to be reader grappling with reading a translation, what it's like to be in her study writing that experience, and, by implication, what it means to be a translator (and more on that explicitly later). So much overlap and shifting around of these roles.
Also I really want to listen to the lectures. Need to dig in here https://www.ubu.com/sound/barthes.html
Oooh, thank you so much for this link, Angela! I'll include it in the next newsletter.
Well, for those that know French, it’ll be great :)
Day 6 (Briggs, pp29-31): I absolutely love how she returns to the opening scene of her book, with the gauze and the arms, etc. This is particularly satisfying, and we have a recognition of a second author, that is, the one doing the translation.
Barthes. session of Dec 2/78: I certainly appreciate how Barthes finds himself to be past middle-aged (though such a determination is impossible)--I turned 50 last month. He goes on to say that he has a certain amount of time left, and he has spent enough time in repetition, so he needs to change, to embark on a "Grand Project," a _vita nova_. He even suggests that he thought he'd retire to write full-time and forsake the lecture. Of course, this is what he's doing instead, lecturing, a medium that dies (though, now that it's in a book, it sticks around!). He then defines something important, I think: to want-to-write. This desire is central.
I love that he had a sort of epiphany on April 15, 1978: that he would write!
Finally, a favourite quote: "writing serves as a salvation, as a means to vanquish Death: not his own, but the death of loved ones; a way of bearing witness for them, of perpetuating them by drawing them out of non-Memory." (9)
I turn 50 this month :) I loved following his thoughts on what can happen at this age, how one might respond to it, how HE wants to respond to it -- I love his line "to change ideas is banal; it's as natural as breathing." What has to change is the PRACTICE of writing -- he wants a new method. To DO something different instead of BELIEVING something different (although one will probably lead to the other at some point?). Who knows where a new writing practice will take a person!
I'm 55 (btw, happy early birthday, Rebecca!) and so I also am drawn to, and moved by, Barthes' discussion of middle age, the question of what can still be possible, what can (and perhaps must) change, and how that process might occur. One of the many things I'm so struck by in the Barthes (I just finished the first session, Dec. 2, this morning) is how moving I find almost all of it. I don't know what I expected, exactly—probably that this text would engage my head but not necessarily my heart (I know they're not separate, or not always separate! But still...). And instead the text feels profoundly heartful to me, and I regularly find myself tearing up, and needing to copy passages into my notebook so I can keep them close (this reminds me of Kate Briggs, in TLA, talking about the desire to literally re-inscribe a beloved text by copying it—and the relationship of this to translation—but this comes later in the book!). What Barthes writes about feels so human and real and close—not the lofty, kind of chilly, purely intellectual stuff I was imagining.
Thank you, Kasey! :) I so agree about the Barthes -- I will sit down with the second session soon and am curious if his tone stays the same throughout. I love how he tells a personal story about his epiphany and then announces that he's going to describe his epiphany in a theoretical, philosophical way. It's so great to get both "versions" of this, and I love how he announces what he plans to do. I joke about feeling attacked by Barthes's thoughts on midlife, but I found them meaningful and inspiring.
I'm also really moved by that quote about writing as salvation, Nicholas, and also by doing (instead of believing) differently, Rebecca. And I think I'm also moved by the "we-ness" of the Barthes text. Which I know was a big part of the inspiration for this read-along! And it still surprises me!—the way he's so clearly including his students and listeners, inviting them so warmly on this journey of new life/new writing practice with him. In fact, he seems to just assume that of course that's so: they're all in it together (and we, as readers, are in it together with Barthes, his students—which comes back to the idea of contemporaneous bodies possibly separated in some ways by time but also profoundly connected by or through time). I don't think I ever felt that as a student: that my teachers or professors were inviting me into a process with them—I loved being a student but it felt so much more binary: teachers/professors in one place, doing one thing, and the rest of us students in another place and doing something related but basically different and separate.
I'm so curious about the teacher/student relationship here -- my question is, what are the students meant to learn? what did they expect to get out of this? Also, this makes me think about how I can invite my own students into a process, how I can break down that binary, at least in some ways.
I'm curious about this too—and I'll be curious to hear what ideas you (and the other teachers in the group too?) come up with re inviting students into a process—love that you are thinking about this.
I'm currently doing a workshop at my school (a community college) on helping students with their reading, and we have talked about discussing their and our own reading practices and experiences, to get them thinking metacognitively about it and to encourage them to see how they can improve through working on it (it's not that they can or can't read well, it's that we're all working on our abilities, at all levels). So I will definitely be talking about my experience reading Barthes! Because I LOVE it so far, but I do not understand everything; it takes me a long time to read him, I have to reread him frequently, I skip ahead to see what's coming up and whether that will help me understand, and then I go back to fill in the gaps, etc. etc. This is not inviting students into my process, exactly, but it is sharing it with them.
I'm looking forward to becoming obsessed with Barthes with you!
We began that journey with A Lover's Discourse, but now it's time to keep going! Can't wait.
In Barthes' January 13, 1979 lecture on haiku, he describes the mathematical combinations possible within the constraints of haiku. "The number of possibilities is reduced, whence the collections of thousands of haiku, enabling the poet to check that his composition hasn't already been composed by someone else--> Essentially a board game, but what's at stake is not a dull performance (crosswords, Scrabble) but a *vibration* of the world." I was immediately reminded that there is a game--the type that he would call a "dull performance"--made from Japanese poetry.
The game is 歌ガルタ - Uta-garuta ("garuta" is borrowed from the Portuguese *carta*), literally translated into "Poetry Cards." Each match has an official reader, and players who are either competing separately or in teams. 100 cards featuring poems are shuffled for the reader and another 100 cards with only the final two lines of the poems are laid out on the floor. The reader pulls a card from their stack and begins to read the poem. Their pace and enunciation influence the gameplay, because different pacing can make a poem seem like an entirely different piece. The players compete to be the first to grab the card on the floor that matches the poem being read. In some cases the first syllable is unique, so the player only needs to memorize the first syllable and last line. The poem is reduced to a single noise which in isolation has its own meaning. For other poems, the player must wait, tensed, for the first line to drip from the reader's mouth. (like drops from a thatched roof... we'll get to that shortly)
The most common deck used is called *Hyakunin Isshu*, or One Hundred Poems from One Hundred Poets. The poems are not haikus; each poem has five lines, with a rhythm of 5-7-5-7-7, a popular format that preceded the haiku by centuries. They do not meet Barthe's particular criteria for haiku, but I think he would appreciated some of them, like this 7th century poem:
秋の田の
かりほの庵の
苫をあらみ
わが衣手は
露にぬれつつ
Coarse the rush-mat roof
Sheltering the harvest-hut
Of the autumn rice-field;
And my sleeves are growing wet
With the moisture dripping through.
This translation is "a revised version" of the translation by Clay McCauley in 1917. I do not know who "revised" it; I found it on a website dedicated to the *Hyakunin Isshu* (https://jti.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/hyakunin/frames/hyakuframes.html). My translation, in which I deliberately make it more haiku-like:
In autumn paddies,
under a harvest-thatched roof
my sleeves wet with dew
For a more complete history of Uta-garuta in English, I recommend woodcarver David Bull's description. https://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~xs3d-bull/essays/karuta/karuta.html
Here is a postcard depicting the game https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/c261ef12-e4c2-3577-e040-e00a18067776
(I think I hit a character limit, so carrying on...)
秋の田の
かりほの庵の
苫をあらみ
わが衣手は
露にぬれつつ
Coarse the rush-mat roof
Sheltering the harvest-hut
Of the autumn rice-field;
And my sleeves are growing wet
With the moisture dripping through.
This translation is "a revised version" of the translation by Clay McCauley in 1917. I do not know who "revised" it; I found it on a website dedicated to the *Hyakunin Isshu* (https://jti.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/hyakunin/frames/hyakuframes.html). My translation, in which I deliberately make it more haiku-like:
In autumn paddies,
under a harvest-thatched roof
my sleeves wet with dew
For a more complete history of Uta-garuta in English, I recommend woodcarver David Bull's description. https://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~xs3d-bull/essays/karuta/karuta.html
Here is a postcard depicting the game https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/c261ef12-e4c2-3577-e040-e00a18067776
Thank you for this, Sara! I love this. I haven't read the Haiku section yet, but I love the idea of mathematical combinations possible in Haiku and his phrase "a *vibration* of the world" is great. Maybe Uta-garuta would be something Barthes would call a "dull performance," but I'm intrigued by it.