#KateBriggs24 Week 5
This Little Art, p. 98-123, and Sessions of Feb. 10th and 17th
We are excited to host a video call for anyone able to join us! We will meet Thursday, February 15th at 8PM Eastern, 5PM Pacific. To join the meeting, just use this link.
We are very sorry we couldn’t find one time that works for everyone who filled out our survey last week! We want to include all of you, but that’s an impossible dream, so we went with the day that works for the largest number of people. We plan to keep asking for input on your availability for future calls and we will vary the days and times so as many people can participate as possible.
The meeting will be informal and low-key — just a chance to get to know one another and share our thoughts and impressions. We will discuss whatever is on people’s minds. The plan is to use Google Meet, and the conversation will be no longer than an hour.
Everyone is welcome to join the call, whether you filled out the survey or not. It’s also fine if you aren’t comfortable joining us — as always, we welcome all levels and forms of participation.
If you plan to join us on the call, we’d love your feedback on what you would like to talk about. Any particular topics or questions you would like us to make sure we cover?
How is your reading going? Let us know!
Sara’s cat is really into Roland Barthes. Like, REALLY into him:
Schedule
Here’s what we are reading for the upcoming week:
Links and Resources
Rebecca Cullen wrote about #KateBriggs24 Week 3 in her latest substack newsletter.
Dr. Andrew McInnes was inspired by Kate Briggs to try his hand at a translation. Read his translation of Mme de Stäel’s translation of Jean Paul Richter’s ‘Speech of the Dead Christ’.
Two interviews came up in the comments last week, first Kate Briggs’s appearance on Between the Covers, and second, on the Fitzcarraldo podcast. These interviews are mainly about The Long Form, but they cover This Little Art as well.
From Sara Gore in the comments from last week: this post from The Haiku Experiment is about, as Sara puts it, “how early translators of haiku made choices that led to the association in the West with haiku and minimalism.”
Kim McNeill found “A Manifesto for Ultratranslation,” which is mentioned on p. 71 in This Little Art. It was written collaboratively in 2013 in a 1923 Sears & Roebuck kit barn on the estate of Edna St. Vincent Millay in Austerlitz, NY (!).
Discussion
From Adam James Smith: '"Imagine," says Barthes, "if... all but one discipline were to be expelled by our educational system, it is the discipline of Literature which would have to be saved, for all knowledge, all the sciences are present in the literary monument."'
Don’t miss Dr. Minx Marple reading a quotation from This Little Art over on Twitter:
From Chiara Veltri:
Angela Newland with a copy of How to Speak Dragonese!
Kate Briggs blurb alert! The book is Like a Sky Inside by Jakuta Alikavazovic, translated by Daniel Levin Becker.
From Catherine Eaton:
Thank you all for your company and your comments!
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TLA, p. 106-109: I'm shocked to hear that Jonathan Culler found Barthes's lectures dull! Although...I am curious what people thought about how they were to listen to. I'd love to hear more opinions from his students. I think I would have a hard time following them if I were listening to them (and understood French). I love taking my time reading them, but listening to them would be another matter. And, of course, when you don't know that someone's life is nearing it's end, you don't realize you should spend time with them no matter what.
Quickly sharing what I put on Twitter: Barthes: "That could be the definition of poetry: it would, in short, be the language of the Real in that it can't be divided up any further or has no interest in dividing itself up any further." My god does Barthes cover a lot in the Feb. 17th session. Theories of photography, photography vs. film, theories of poetry, essential characteristics of haiku, including the lovely "co-presence jolt."
How heartbreaking the section on Ferrante was -- the layers of translation and reading/writing/rewriting and the complicated, difficult relationship with the mother at the heart of it. Did the mother say the horrible thing or not? We don't know, but she might have. So sad!