For those not on social media, here's what I highlighted from today's (Sunday 1/21) reading on Twitter/Bluesky:
From the Briggs: I love the shift from "What exactly did I want?" to "what is it that you have found in the practice of translation?" The 1st is about the singular, static self (who are you and what do you want?); 2nd is about practice/experience (who do you become when you translate?).
We are back to garments (gauzy sleeves): Helen Lowe-Porter on herself as translator: "this unknown instrument" that will serve Mann "to change the garment of his art into a better one which might clothe her for the market place until times changed." Or, in Briggs's terms, a lady's maid, "undressing and carefully re-dressing the literary work of art for the purposes of a new market."
Barthes: "I'll not be taking account of the historical sociology of the Novel...I'll not dispute any of this, but the Fantasy shan't be paralyzed by it ... Nor shall I let myself be daunted...by the question as to whether it's possible to write a novel TODAY."
Barthes made me laugh -- the sexual fantasy/novel fantasy connection, the sidelining of whole fields of novel study, the admission of his bad memory (which I relate to).
I also find the Barthes funny! Which surprises me. As the heartfulness of his text, how personal it is and how full of feeling, continues to be a surprise. I have the strong sense that, although we often speak of the realms of emotion/feeling and intellect/philosophy/literature as distinct, for him they weren't all that separate. And the personal nature of the lectures (his bad memory, his favorite novels, April 15, etc.) keeps drawing me in.
Your point about emotion and intellect not being distinct for Barthes is so important. I haven't read much Barthes, but his book Camera Lucida felt that way too.
Briggs, p. 37-44 (I'm catching up a bit): The idea of "supporting texts" is beautiful, and I can't help but think about how Kate Briggs's own books are supporting texts for me, and I can see that Roland Barthes's books might become supporting texts as well.
I LOVE the bit about Barthes's students contributing to the lecture series through conversations, notes, etc., and "redirecting the path of the research toward their own different concerns, which might be one way of describing to myself what I think I am doing here." What IS writing, conversation, research about texts but that kind of redirecting towards our own concerns? And it's a way of thinking about what we're doing with our own project -- speaking with Briggs and Barthes, speaking back to them, making our own meaning of their ideas, redirecting them towards our own concerns (as I do when I use Barthes to help me think about turning 50).
I also love Briggs's loyalty to the FEELING of having actually read a book when we have read the translation, of having had an authentic aesthetic experience with that book, an experience we should take seriously and honor. Because there are so many variables when reading a book, so many circumstances that can affect how we read, and translation is just one of them. I don't remember if she goes on to complicate this idea, but I love the stopping point here: "There he is, and this is what he's thinking, and this is how he feels."
I'm also so moved by this idea of "supporting texts"—the way this phrase makes visible the reality and necessity of the texts that seem to *see* us. I'm re-listening to Kate Briggs on the Fitzcarraldo podcast, and towards the beginning she speaks beautifully about books that feel like this, books that give us a sense of a mutuality, a back-and-forth between reader and text. A conversation! So much like what we're all doing together, as you said. Thinking/reading/being together, and redirecting these lovely books toward our own concerns. For me, too, yes! Barthes is helping me to think and feel into the age I am, helping me specifically with the sense I've had in my own writing of stuckness ("acedy"). I love that his own movement out of stuckness (which he describes so intimately and vulnerably) feels both out of his control (he's listless, sad, "marinading" in that, and then suddenly ideas begin to appear) and also conscious, willed (he courts those ideas by thinking and feeling into them more deeply, he pursues them) (this is all pp. 7-8 in TPotN, btw). Being able to move into newness comes both as a sort of gift from the universe and as a process of conscious intention, and somehow that feels really heartening to me.
I love what you say here about change being out of his control, but also something he can instigate or will -- he can go deeper inside himself and the change will come from there. Somehow pursuing ideas becomes a journey into himself, his interests and abilities and desires, and he finds there the new thing he wants to create. I'm thinking about how writing can come if you just start writing, even if you begin with jibberish or repetition -- beginning the practice of writing sets you on the path that will take you somewhere.
I can't begin to describe how much I'm loving this. I've wanted to return to Barthes for a long time and wanted to read Briggs but I had no idea what to expect. First, so many serendipities! Please forgive the 'autobiography'. Many years ago I wrote a PhD about reading or rather an intertextual theory of reading so it is just wonderful to be thinking with these ideas again. I was an academic for 18 years and then left and wrote a novel (which I pretended - until the last moment - was a kind of creative non-fiction). Trying to think about these different writing practices together is something I've really managed to avoid thinking about until now. Just to add a further layer of serendipity, I'm just finishing a second novel set in Italy in the 1920s and 30s and have played a very complicated game with myself that I'm in fact translating a novel from Italian. Of course no such novel exists. This project is so exciting for so many reasons.
Back to the reading, what I sense in Briggs (and Barthes) is the shadow of Mikhail Bakhtin. When Briggs is writing about the different languages within any language for example, I'm thinking about the heteroglossia and the relationship between the dialogic and the monologic. This may just be me - but I'm finding it helpful at the moment. And he's another writer I've been planning to return to for a while.
I'm so glad, Rachel! Like Kasey, I love that your writing has involved a certain amount of pretending -- pretending it's not a novel, pretending it's a translation. How fascinating, the idea of writing a translation of a book that does not actually exist! I kind of want to try it :)
The autobiography is fascinating! And I love, especially, the way you've been approaching writing your 2nd novel, as a translation from a book that doesn't exist. Very exciting!
This week of Barthes' session has been so rich in ideas, phrases, and worlds. It's been such a pleasure to read and think over!--and I haven't even made it to the end of the talk yet. There's been quite a few passages that struck me (I've got so many underlined about writing fantasies, so fascinating) but this one keeps stepping forward in my mind:
"It's only by coming into conflict with reality (with the reality of poetic, novelistic practice) that the fantasy ceases to be a fantasy and attains to the Subtle, the Unprecedented-->Proust fantasized the Essay, the Novel, but wrote a Third Form; in order to begin writing his work, he was obliged to leave the rigidity of the Fantasy behind. The Fantasy as an energy, a mentor that gets things going, but what it then goes on to produce in real terms has nothing to do with the Code." (pg. 11)
I love this idea of a Third Form. Another work that Barthes' references (with love) is War and Peace. Tolstoy said about War and Peace: "It is not a novel, still less an epic poem, still less a historical chronicle. War and Peace is what the author wanted and was able to express, in the form in which it is expressed." So here is this Third Form again.
I'd say that the Third Form is what Barthes is doing right now by giving a series of lectures on the preparation of a Novel, what Kate Briggs is doing by discussing with us about her thoughts and feelings on translations, and then what she does in this series of translated lectures on preparing a novel.
I'm also compelled by the idea of the Third Form (and I think many of my favorite prose books could probably described in that way). I haven't read Proust, though I've been wanting to, and now am curious about what Barthes means exactly when he references Proust in the quote above (I will probably need to read him to find out!). And yes, I also loved, and copied into my notebook, the sentence about "the fantasy as energy, a mentor..."—what a surprising and permission-giving way to think about fantasy of any sort and especially fantasy focused on making creative work.
Yes! The Third Form tends to be my favorite prose books as well. I'm sure those are hard to market but my goodness, many are such gems. I haven't read Proust as well--a goal for later this year, perhaps. I have read War and Peace and though it's a novel, it's more than just that. There's a lot of history and philosophizing in it and more besides.
Fantasy as mentor (as Virgil was to Dante) completely surprised me. I had never thought of such a thing! but how encouraging it is. Like you said "permission-giving!" So often the word and practice of "fantasy" is looked at as suspect (at least in the US) but Barthes is redefining it in wonderful ways.
Exactly! It *is* suspect in the US, and I love how he's redefining it. Fantasizing about writing a novel: I can imagine people responding dismissively to this idea, along the lines of "But that's not actually writing!" (i.e., it's just pretending, it's fluffy/meaningless/not real work!) But for him fantasizing is an essential part of the process, a mentor and a guide (though it also must be left behind at some point). Like so many things already in the Barthes text (and in Briggs too!), this is making me rethink my own ways of writing (and being!).
Just the other day, I wrote in this very comments section that I have read a lot of Barthes. Briggs is reminding me here that I haven’t really read any (even if I have a few copies in the original French). I’ve only read Barthes in translation, but how easy it is for me to forget the mediation happening in translation.
I appreciate that Briggs talks about reading in the original language as “surplus.” (40) If only there was the sense that we have read an author even if it’s in translation.
I copied this quote into my notebook today: "The wounds of Desire can be healed, transcended by the idea of 'Writing a Novel,' of moving beyond the contingencies of failure in the undertaking of a great task, a General Desire, whose object is the whole world." (TPOTN p. 14) I'm not sure I totally understand this, but I'm moved by it nevertheless! I love the thought that writing a novel (or even the desire to write one), taking on a "great task," can heal us in some way. I feel like my understanding of these lines, such as it is, is much more intuitive/emotional than logical—I read them and had a feeling of "yes!" though honestly I don't think I could paraphrase or explain them to anyone else. Again, how emotional, and emotionally moving, I'm finding the Barthes. Such a surprise!
I’ve read a lot of Barthes, and I’ve read This Little Art before, but I didn’t remember the passage on p39 that describes Barthes’ research method: the loose reference to various materials which constitute the “fantasy” of living with another person (his lectures on How to Live Together). This is really a wonderful description of his way of doing research, so open and collaborative.
I also find intriguing the idea that Mann is really indebted to Lowe-Porter for the reputation as one of the leading German novelists of the 20th century (in English).
I love this description of research! Create a fantasy, and then from the fantasy, set a course of research, one that is open-ended, that feels like a real adventure. And the students were in on that adventure and knew they were because they contributed to it so frequently -- how wonderful!
I really appreciate Briggs’ delineation between a monograph (written by a single author) and a work of translation. I would a bit horrified if someone like Mann was waiting for me and passing the time by looking at my library!
I also really appreciate that Barthes is talking about Wanting-to-Write, but he’s pretty clear that he won’t be able to do it (because his memory isn’t good enough). I also like that he’s not going to talk about the definitions and rules of novels, but of novels that are necessary (what makes a novel necessary?). I also really like that a novel is “an act of love.” My favourite quote (going up on the socials immediately): “[writing a] Novel: A means of combating the hardness of the heart, acedy.” (p14)
I love that quotation too. And the way Barthes brushes aside definitions and rules, and all the theory about the novel's historical and social significance. He makes clear he KNOWS the theory, but it's not relevant here. He's so amusingly unapologetic about the ground rules he is setting.
Just a quick note about yesterday’s readings (from Barthes). I love the quote, “I don’t like _the_ past … a kind of general resistance … to narrating _what will never happen again_.” (17)
On to today (Briggs, pp49-52): again, Briggs describes the positioning, that relationship between the reader and the author. I love how she describes Barthes’ lectures up to the point we’ve read to. And Briggs then talks about what the new life is all about: “I’m never where you want me to be.” (52)
I love the kind of writing Barthes describes -- writing of the present -- and I love how he has set up his particular writing challenge. His introductory material has been so fascinating! What a way to discuss novel theory and form, by imagining how he would write his own novel, making it personal and practical, and also taking so much time to do this thinking and imagining. AND doing it publicly! What a wonderful project.
With Barthes moving on to consider a novel of the present and if or how any notations/fragments could be turned into a river of language, I wonder what he would have made of Ducks, Newburyport? Stream of consciousness seems like it would have achieved his aim if writing a novel was his aim. But of course not ostensibly a format that lends itself to planning.
It also struck me that with A Writer’s Diary, Toby Litt has turned fragments into a novel of the present but not in any kind of Proustian way.
Yes! I thought about this comment when I read the session for yesterday -- Ducks, Newburyport seems like a good resolution to the problems he's describing, or the situation he's describing. I feel like the novel-in-fragments is a popular form now, but not nearly so much during Barthes's time, and I'm wondering how much of an influence he had on that form.
I found Briggs's point about the student who wants you to stay the same to be so interesting -- I feel that we don't think enough about how the people around us change and how we change and how much negotiation that requires on everyone's part.
TLA p. 53-55: I'm interested in the paradox Briggs is describing in this section -- it's so easy not to think about translation, and it's the translator who facilities the ease with which we do not think about translation, if the translation if well-done so we can forget about it. But the translator also has a lot at stake in the work and put a lot of time and effort into it -- the racing heart anxious about getting it right -- and so can we maybe pay attention to the effort sometimes? Can we think about two things at once, or move back and forth between the two things? Can we acknowledge the effort that goes into creating a translation that allows us to forget the one who made the effort?
For those not on social media, here's what I highlighted from today's (Sunday 1/21) reading on Twitter/Bluesky:
From the Briggs: I love the shift from "What exactly did I want?" to "what is it that you have found in the practice of translation?" The 1st is about the singular, static self (who are you and what do you want?); 2nd is about practice/experience (who do you become when you translate?).
We are back to garments (gauzy sleeves): Helen Lowe-Porter on herself as translator: "this unknown instrument" that will serve Mann "to change the garment of his art into a better one which might clothe her for the market place until times changed." Or, in Briggs's terms, a lady's maid, "undressing and carefully re-dressing the literary work of art for the purposes of a new market."
Barthes: "I'll not be taking account of the historical sociology of the Novel...I'll not dispute any of this, but the Fantasy shan't be paralyzed by it ... Nor shall I let myself be daunted...by the question as to whether it's possible to write a novel TODAY."
Barthes made me laugh -- the sexual fantasy/novel fantasy connection, the sidelining of whole fields of novel study, the admission of his bad memory (which I relate to).
I LOVED both readings today.
I also find the Barthes funny! Which surprises me. As the heartfulness of his text, how personal it is and how full of feeling, continues to be a surprise. I have the strong sense that, although we often speak of the realms of emotion/feeling and intellect/philosophy/literature as distinct, for him they weren't all that separate. And the personal nature of the lectures (his bad memory, his favorite novels, April 15, etc.) keeps drawing me in.
Your point about emotion and intellect not being distinct for Barthes is so important. I haven't read much Barthes, but his book Camera Lucida felt that way too.
Ah, I didn’t catch the connection to clothes. Thanks for the reminder!
Briggs, p. 37-44 (I'm catching up a bit): The idea of "supporting texts" is beautiful, and I can't help but think about how Kate Briggs's own books are supporting texts for me, and I can see that Roland Barthes's books might become supporting texts as well.
I LOVE the bit about Barthes's students contributing to the lecture series through conversations, notes, etc., and "redirecting the path of the research toward their own different concerns, which might be one way of describing to myself what I think I am doing here." What IS writing, conversation, research about texts but that kind of redirecting towards our own concerns? And it's a way of thinking about what we're doing with our own project -- speaking with Briggs and Barthes, speaking back to them, making our own meaning of their ideas, redirecting them towards our own concerns (as I do when I use Barthes to help me think about turning 50).
I also love Briggs's loyalty to the FEELING of having actually read a book when we have read the translation, of having had an authentic aesthetic experience with that book, an experience we should take seriously and honor. Because there are so many variables when reading a book, so many circumstances that can affect how we read, and translation is just one of them. I don't remember if she goes on to complicate this idea, but I love the stopping point here: "There he is, and this is what he's thinking, and this is how he feels."
I'm also so moved by this idea of "supporting texts"—the way this phrase makes visible the reality and necessity of the texts that seem to *see* us. I'm re-listening to Kate Briggs on the Fitzcarraldo podcast, and towards the beginning she speaks beautifully about books that feel like this, books that give us a sense of a mutuality, a back-and-forth between reader and text. A conversation! So much like what we're all doing together, as you said. Thinking/reading/being together, and redirecting these lovely books toward our own concerns. For me, too, yes! Barthes is helping me to think and feel into the age I am, helping me specifically with the sense I've had in my own writing of stuckness ("acedy"). I love that his own movement out of stuckness (which he describes so intimately and vulnerably) feels both out of his control (he's listless, sad, "marinading" in that, and then suddenly ideas begin to appear) and also conscious, willed (he courts those ideas by thinking and feeling into them more deeply, he pursues them) (this is all pp. 7-8 in TPotN, btw). Being able to move into newness comes both as a sort of gift from the universe and as a process of conscious intention, and somehow that feels really heartening to me.
I love what you say here about change being out of his control, but also something he can instigate or will -- he can go deeper inside himself and the change will come from there. Somehow pursuing ideas becomes a journey into himself, his interests and abilities and desires, and he finds there the new thing he wants to create. I'm thinking about how writing can come if you just start writing, even if you begin with jibberish or repetition -- beginning the practice of writing sets you on the path that will take you somewhere.
Yes, exactly! I love this: "he can go deeper inside himself and the change will come from there." So heartening.
I can't begin to describe how much I'm loving this. I've wanted to return to Barthes for a long time and wanted to read Briggs but I had no idea what to expect. First, so many serendipities! Please forgive the 'autobiography'. Many years ago I wrote a PhD about reading or rather an intertextual theory of reading so it is just wonderful to be thinking with these ideas again. I was an academic for 18 years and then left and wrote a novel (which I pretended - until the last moment - was a kind of creative non-fiction). Trying to think about these different writing practices together is something I've really managed to avoid thinking about until now. Just to add a further layer of serendipity, I'm just finishing a second novel set in Italy in the 1920s and 30s and have played a very complicated game with myself that I'm in fact translating a novel from Italian. Of course no such novel exists. This project is so exciting for so many reasons.
Back to the reading, what I sense in Briggs (and Barthes) is the shadow of Mikhail Bakhtin. When Briggs is writing about the different languages within any language for example, I'm thinking about the heteroglossia and the relationship between the dialogic and the monologic. This may just be me - but I'm finding it helpful at the moment. And he's another writer I've been planning to return to for a while.
I'm so glad, Rachel! Like Kasey, I love that your writing has involved a certain amount of pretending -- pretending it's not a novel, pretending it's a translation. How fascinating, the idea of writing a translation of a book that does not actually exist! I kind of want to try it :)
The autobiography is fascinating! And I love, especially, the way you've been approaching writing your 2nd novel, as a translation from a book that doesn't exist. Very exciting!
This week of Barthes' session has been so rich in ideas, phrases, and worlds. It's been such a pleasure to read and think over!--and I haven't even made it to the end of the talk yet. There's been quite a few passages that struck me (I've got so many underlined about writing fantasies, so fascinating) but this one keeps stepping forward in my mind:
"It's only by coming into conflict with reality (with the reality of poetic, novelistic practice) that the fantasy ceases to be a fantasy and attains to the Subtle, the Unprecedented-->Proust fantasized the Essay, the Novel, but wrote a Third Form; in order to begin writing his work, he was obliged to leave the rigidity of the Fantasy behind. The Fantasy as an energy, a mentor that gets things going, but what it then goes on to produce in real terms has nothing to do with the Code." (pg. 11)
I love this idea of a Third Form. Another work that Barthes' references (with love) is War and Peace. Tolstoy said about War and Peace: "It is not a novel, still less an epic poem, still less a historical chronicle. War and Peace is what the author wanted and was able to express, in the form in which it is expressed." So here is this Third Form again.
I'd say that the Third Form is what Barthes is doing right now by giving a series of lectures on the preparation of a Novel, what Kate Briggs is doing by discussing with us about her thoughts and feelings on translations, and then what she does in this series of translated lectures on preparing a novel.
I'm also compelled by the idea of the Third Form (and I think many of my favorite prose books could probably described in that way). I haven't read Proust, though I've been wanting to, and now am curious about what Barthes means exactly when he references Proust in the quote above (I will probably need to read him to find out!). And yes, I also loved, and copied into my notebook, the sentence about "the fantasy as energy, a mentor..."—what a surprising and permission-giving way to think about fantasy of any sort and especially fantasy focused on making creative work.
Yes! The Third Form tends to be my favorite prose books as well. I'm sure those are hard to market but my goodness, many are such gems. I haven't read Proust as well--a goal for later this year, perhaps. I have read War and Peace and though it's a novel, it's more than just that. There's a lot of history and philosophizing in it and more besides.
Fantasy as mentor (as Virgil was to Dante) completely surprised me. I had never thought of such a thing! but how encouraging it is. Like you said "permission-giving!" So often the word and practice of "fantasy" is looked at as suspect (at least in the US) but Barthes is redefining it in wonderful ways.
Exactly! It *is* suspect in the US, and I love how he's redefining it. Fantasizing about writing a novel: I can imagine people responding dismissively to this idea, along the lines of "But that's not actually writing!" (i.e., it's just pretending, it's fluffy/meaningless/not real work!) But for him fantasizing is an essential part of the process, a mentor and a guide (though it also must be left behind at some point). Like so many things already in the Barthes text (and in Briggs too!), this is making me rethink my own ways of writing (and being!).
I LOVE this positive use of the word fantasy; it makes me think about how if we want to create a new, better world, we need to imagine it first.
Just the other day, I wrote in this very comments section that I have read a lot of Barthes. Briggs is reminding me here that I haven’t really read any (even if I have a few copies in the original French). I’ve only read Barthes in translation, but how easy it is for me to forget the mediation happening in translation.
I appreciate that Briggs talks about reading in the original language as “surplus.” (40) If only there was the sense that we have read an author even if it’s in translation.
I'm going to see if I can keep up with my own thinking!
https://open.substack.com/pub/keeperofthecats/p/kate-briggs-week-2?r=19i5wa&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcome=true
I love this! I’ll be back to respond in more detail later, but I’m so excited to subscribe!
I copied this quote into my notebook today: "The wounds of Desire can be healed, transcended by the idea of 'Writing a Novel,' of moving beyond the contingencies of failure in the undertaking of a great task, a General Desire, whose object is the whole world." (TPOTN p. 14) I'm not sure I totally understand this, but I'm moved by it nevertheless! I love the thought that writing a novel (or even the desire to write one), taking on a "great task," can heal us in some way. I feel like my understanding of these lines, such as it is, is much more intuitive/emotional than logical—I read them and had a feeling of "yes!" though honestly I don't think I could paraphrase or explain them to anyone else. Again, how emotional, and emotionally moving, I'm finding the Barthes. Such a surprise!
I’ve read a lot of Barthes, and I’ve read This Little Art before, but I didn’t remember the passage on p39 that describes Barthes’ research method: the loose reference to various materials which constitute the “fantasy” of living with another person (his lectures on How to Live Together). This is really a wonderful description of his way of doing research, so open and collaborative.
I also find intriguing the idea that Mann is really indebted to Lowe-Porter for the reputation as one of the leading German novelists of the 20th century (in English).
I love this description of research! Create a fantasy, and then from the fantasy, set a course of research, one that is open-ended, that feels like a real adventure. And the students were in on that adventure and knew they were because they contributed to it so frequently -- how wonderful!
I really appreciate Briggs’ delineation between a monograph (written by a single author) and a work of translation. I would a bit horrified if someone like Mann was waiting for me and passing the time by looking at my library!
I also really appreciate that Barthes is talking about Wanting-to-Write, but he’s pretty clear that he won’t be able to do it (because his memory isn’t good enough). I also like that he’s not going to talk about the definitions and rules of novels, but of novels that are necessary (what makes a novel necessary?). I also really like that a novel is “an act of love.” My favourite quote (going up on the socials immediately): “[writing a] Novel: A means of combating the hardness of the heart, acedy.” (p14)
I love that quotation too. And the way Barthes brushes aside definitions and rules, and all the theory about the novel's historical and social significance. He makes clear he KNOWS the theory, but it's not relevant here. He's so amusingly unapologetic about the ground rules he is setting.
Just a quick note about yesterday’s readings (from Barthes). I love the quote, “I don’t like _the_ past … a kind of general resistance … to narrating _what will never happen again_.” (17)
On to today (Briggs, pp49-52): again, Briggs describes the positioning, that relationship between the reader and the author. I love how she describes Barthes’ lectures up to the point we’ve read to. And Briggs then talks about what the new life is all about: “I’m never where you want me to be.” (52)
I love the kind of writing Barthes describes -- writing of the present -- and I love how he has set up his particular writing challenge. His introductory material has been so fascinating! What a way to discuss novel theory and form, by imagining how he would write his own novel, making it personal and practical, and also taking so much time to do this thinking and imagining. AND doing it publicly! What a wonderful project.
I just found this I thought the group might like, Katharine May on her preparation for the novel (or non-fiction). https://katherinemay.substack.com/p/how-i-start-a-new-book?utm_medium=email&utm_source=multiple-personal-recommendations-email&nthPub=81
With Barthes moving on to consider a novel of the present and if or how any notations/fragments could be turned into a river of language, I wonder what he would have made of Ducks, Newburyport? Stream of consciousness seems like it would have achieved his aim if writing a novel was his aim. But of course not ostensibly a format that lends itself to planning.
It also struck me that with A Writer’s Diary, Toby Litt has turned fragments into a novel of the present but not in any kind of Proustian way.
Yes! I thought about this comment when I read the session for yesterday -- Ducks, Newburyport seems like a good resolution to the problems he's describing, or the situation he's describing. I feel like the novel-in-fragments is a popular form now, but not nearly so much during Barthes's time, and I'm wondering how much of an influence he had on that form.
Briggs, 53-55: Barthes isn’t waiting by the phone! He isn’t where I want him to be. (See the end of yesterday’s readings, p52)
How does the translator do the work of capturing what ultimately cannot be captured (Barthes’ semiotic looseness, for instance)?
I found Briggs's point about the student who wants you to stay the same to be so interesting -- I feel that we don't think enough about how the people around us change and how we change and how much negotiation that requires on everyone's part.
TLA p. 53-55: I'm interested in the paradox Briggs is describing in this section -- it's so easy not to think about translation, and it's the translator who facilities the ease with which we do not think about translation, if the translation if well-done so we can forget about it. But the translator also has a lot at stake in the work and put a lot of time and effort into it -- the racing heart anxious about getting it right -- and so can we maybe pay attention to the effort sometimes? Can we think about two things at once, or move back and forth between the two things? Can we acknowledge the effort that goes into creating a translation that allows us to forget the one who made the effort?