I just finished the "Would-Be-Writer" section and thought it ended beautifully -- the very end captures the paradoxes of translation so well:
"let me see what might happen if I were to try writing these lines, these lines that I know I didn't write, *again*--
only this time *in my own language*
and only this time *myself*."
Yes, a writer, not a writer, somewhere in the middle -- honestly, who knows what translation is! This section complicates the act of translation so beautifully. It makes me think about the range of translation activities in ways I hadn't before.
I was also moved by the ideas Briggs picks up from Adrienne Ghaly: the haiku allows "new ways of thinking relationality on a micro-scale; connecting, however fleetingly or long-lastingly, a body to the atmosphere, a body to an idea or to a line from a book and in this way, perhaps, to another reading and writing body, and doing so in a manner that is neither generalizing nor flattening, neither crushing nor reducing" (160). I'm not sure I fully understand that idea, but I love it. I downloaded Ghaly's essay from my library, although I haven't read it yet. If anyone wants a copy, let me know.
Rebecca, I noted that quotation especially too! (And yes, I'd love a copy of Ghaly's essay.) Very moving to me, this idea of connections that blossom outward from the haiku, "relationality on a micro-scale"—that a piece of writing, one as tiny as a haiku, can ripple out and create all these new relationships (and TLA seems to me so much about relationship, among many other things). I also love the way "neither generalizing nor flattening, neither crushing nor reducing" calls back to Barthes' desire, as explained by KB, not to flatten or crush himself or anyone else, but to be his very particular self (who doesn't like geraniums!), and to invite others (us!) to be their particular, specific selves too.
Yes, that's great echo of Barthes's earlier thought about not flattening himself or anyone else. I think this is a long-term preoccupation of Briggs's that we'll see in The Long Form too -- how to connect with others and somehow mingle with others and become a community, without crushing any individuals -- how to be individuals but more than individuals at the same time.
I suppose a haiku -- or reading a haiku -- allows people to have the same or a similar bodily experience, to be living in the same moment, sort of, in a way that is both grounded (in the particulars of the haiku) and ethereal.
I'm thinking about how Briggs uses long quotations (something I tell my students not to do!) and also will recreate someone's thinking at length -- a lengthy paraphrase, in her own particular style. I'm thinking of p. 156 and the paraphrase of Barthes in the first two paragraphs and long quotation from Richard Howard in the last paragraph. The paraphrases are a sort of translation -- putting the ideas in her own words even if they were originally written in English, or recreating someone's general way of thinking in her own words -- and the quotations are a way of bringing other voices into the text. She leaves so much room for other voices! It's a form of generosity and also of setting up an ongoing dialogue, making the pages seem full and rich and busy, in a good way.
I was definitely taught not to use long quotations when I was a student! And yes, yes, she makes so much room for others. For the writers she's quoting/thinking alongside, and for her readers. I feel like this unfolding that happens on p. 156 is a great example of slowness and, as you said, generosity. It feels like she really wants readers to understand, to come along with her, and that's why she's taking so much time/space with paraphrasing and questioning: she wants us to get it. Or maybe it's not a singular "it", but she wants us to think, feel, and imagine with her, and to feel like we *can* do this. Which is such a contrast to texts that don't seem to have that intent, that present their content in a way that seems to want to prove a sort of rightness rather than opening things up to questioning and exploration and collaboration.
In a way, she captures what it's like to be a reader -- we see her "digesting" or processing the books and essays she reads and information she comes across in a way that allows us to understand them too (at least, to a certain extent).
So true. And since we're all such readers, this feels like a deep pleasure of being with her work—being invited into what it's like for her, KB, as a reader, getting to be in relationship to her reading life.
TLA, p. 151-153: "Because it's true, a translator may well feel deeply about a given piece of writing, she may have made friends with it, she may have made a short-term or lifelong companion out of it, she may have fallen in some straightforward or complicated way in love with it, but none of this will have any necessary bearing on whether she -- or indeed her work -- will be loved back."
Heartbreaking, at least a little bit! From this section, I'm also thinking about the uncertainty about what gets translated, how it comes down to -- at least in part -- what the translator loves and wants to spend time with. The same principle is true more generally for what gets published, what gets reviewed, what gets read, what gets recommended, what wins awards -- there's so much chance involved!
I was very surprised by the Lydia Davis section. For some reason, I had assumed she liked Madame Bovary! since she translated it! but that's obviously not the case. For some reason with the classics, I always assume the translator did it out of love but clearly, this isn't true. Translating the classics can just be paying work (and enjoying the difficulty of it but still not really liking it) just like anything else.
Yes, that was fascinating! I loved Briggs's discussion of how which books a translator loves can determine which books get translated instead of other books, but it's not always a matter of love. I appreciate how she acknowledges the various motivations that go into translating -- it's work, but sometimes it can feel closer to a leisure activity, and other times ... it's just work.
Barthes, Session of March 10, 1979: I'm curious about the inclusion of the labyrinth lectures in this book on the preparation of the novel, especially since Barthes's two lectures were bookends for a series of lectures on the labyrinth we aren't given. I suppose they were included because of chronology and thoroughness, the desire to translate all Barthes's lectures?
Anyway, the closing thoughts on the labyrinth, the session of March 10, 1979, cracked me up because the session begins with a long explanation of why Barthes CAN'T conclude. That feels like a very Barthesian move. His reasons make sense and are fascinating, and include the wonderful idea of not wanting to give anything "metalinguistic treatment" for philosophical reasons that include not wanting to suppress the subject. He doesn't want to generalize, I take this to mean, because generalizations inevitably distort and suppress the subject at hand. He wants the lectures to sit next to each other and leave it at that. (Or, in our case, the lectures are a void that he's, for the most part, leaving alone.)
The lecture moves on to the personal resonances of the labyrinth -- about his lost mother, of course -- also a very Barthesian move. And it ends with a question, a question that brings us back full circle: "Where does a labyrinth begin?"
Do we know if that lecture series actually happened? I searched for Detienne’s lecture and found nothing and I’d have thought it would have been important enough to be captured somewhere.
There's a footnote to the conclusion that mentions a sound recording of the Mannoni lecture, but otherwise, I have no idea. I'm going to ask on Twitter and Bluesky (one thing that Twitter might be good for!).
I really like how Barthes explores the “chiming” of words, what he calls an “immediate phenomenology of the word.” (114) He later seems to suggest that the meanings that “chime” can be labyrinthian in their differences from one person to another or one context or another. I really like the idea of a narrative as a labyrinth. Though, I need to admit that some of the reading of “The Metaphor of the Labyrinth” seemed labyrinthian to me, and I found myself a bit lost and seemingly unable to find my way out!
I got a little nervous starting the section on the labyrinth, nervous about being able to understand it, although once I figured out it it's not directly related to the haiku/novel arguments, I let myself not understand everything 100% and felt okay about it. But there were great ideas in that section, and I love the idea of narrative as a labyrinth too -- so many forking paths to follow.
I love the note from Richard Howard about how Barthes didn’t really care about the translations. Instead of seeing this as morally suspect in some way, I actually think that it points to a kind of humility. He felt that whatever Howard could do was better than what he had done: he had already forgotten it. (Briggs, 156)
I also like that the lectures were published in translation out of order because of a number of factors, but also because of translator preference! (Briggs, 155)
Yes, I liked that point about the out-of-order translations -- and I would rather have the translations out of order if, in exchange, it means the translator is especially excited about the project they are taking on and are doing it less out of sense of obligation.
One of the many things I'm noticing/appreciating/admiring in TLA is the way Briggs circles back to certain ideas and phrases and questions, making my reading experience of her text feel like a spiral—each time we return to a particular thought, it appears in a different light, because of what's come in between the repetitions, because the context has shifted even just slightly. Or: every time a phrase returns, it's deepened, changed. For example, the idea of some aspect of translation, or the way translation happens in the world being "really ridiculous, maybe. But there it is." Underneath this, I hear that of course it's NOT ridiculous at all, it's a matter of care and concern and importance... and at the same time, it's kind of ridiculous! Or at least, it's random or haphazard; it's hard, maybe impossible, to really explain WHY things happen in translation the way they do. (This is reminding me of Rebecca writing about the haphazard nature of translation—what gets translated, and by whom, and when—it all feels so unpredictable.) I do love this aspect of KB's text, this circling back, and I wonder if her use of repetition contributes to the feeling of slowness in TLA (which I also love), of inclusiveness, wanting to proceed slowly enough so that the reader can come along and isn't left behind. It's like saying, here's this idea again, we've been here before, but things are maybe a little different now. Like her use of questions and the way her thinking unfolds on the page, this practice of repetition feels inherently generous to me.
I like that analogy of the spiral, the repetition, but always with a difference of some kind. I think it captures the feeling of consciousness, of the way it feels in my brain sometimes (more than a "stream-of-consciousness" novel does) when ideas come back again and again, in different contexts and after new experiences, so they aren't quite the same. But yes, it's also a way of including the reader -- it feels like she's giving the reader an experience of time that is maybe similar to her own experience of time, time to absorb, to rethink, to complicate and deepen, to question, to live with. Time to feel the idea developing, maybe in a similar way to how she developed the ideas. Time to allow new examples to enter one's life.
Yes! My brain works this way sometimes too—it's a great description of what her writing does, very apt. I love "time to allow new example's to enter one's life."
I just finished the "Would-Be-Writer" section and thought it ended beautifully -- the very end captures the paradoxes of translation so well:
"let me see what might happen if I were to try writing these lines, these lines that I know I didn't write, *again*--
only this time *in my own language*
and only this time *myself*."
Yes, a writer, not a writer, somewhere in the middle -- honestly, who knows what translation is! This section complicates the act of translation so beautifully. It makes me think about the range of translation activities in ways I hadn't before.
I was also moved by the ideas Briggs picks up from Adrienne Ghaly: the haiku allows "new ways of thinking relationality on a micro-scale; connecting, however fleetingly or long-lastingly, a body to the atmosphere, a body to an idea or to a line from a book and in this way, perhaps, to another reading and writing body, and doing so in a manner that is neither generalizing nor flattening, neither crushing nor reducing" (160). I'm not sure I fully understand that idea, but I love it. I downloaded Ghaly's essay from my library, although I haven't read it yet. If anyone wants a copy, let me know.
Rebecca, I noted that quotation especially too! (And yes, I'd love a copy of Ghaly's essay.) Very moving to me, this idea of connections that blossom outward from the haiku, "relationality on a micro-scale"—that a piece of writing, one as tiny as a haiku, can ripple out and create all these new relationships (and TLA seems to me so much about relationship, among many other things). I also love the way "neither generalizing nor flattening, neither crushing nor reducing" calls back to Barthes' desire, as explained by KB, not to flatten or crush himself or anyone else, but to be his very particular self (who doesn't like geraniums!), and to invite others (us!) to be their particular, specific selves too.
Yes, that's great echo of Barthes's earlier thought about not flattening himself or anyone else. I think this is a long-term preoccupation of Briggs's that we'll see in The Long Form too -- how to connect with others and somehow mingle with others and become a community, without crushing any individuals -- how to be individuals but more than individuals at the same time.
I suppose a haiku -- or reading a haiku -- allows people to have the same or a similar bodily experience, to be living in the same moment, sort of, in a way that is both grounded (in the particulars of the haiku) and ethereal.
I'm thinking about how Briggs uses long quotations (something I tell my students not to do!) and also will recreate someone's thinking at length -- a lengthy paraphrase, in her own particular style. I'm thinking of p. 156 and the paraphrase of Barthes in the first two paragraphs and long quotation from Richard Howard in the last paragraph. The paraphrases are a sort of translation -- putting the ideas in her own words even if they were originally written in English, or recreating someone's general way of thinking in her own words -- and the quotations are a way of bringing other voices into the text. She leaves so much room for other voices! It's a form of generosity and also of setting up an ongoing dialogue, making the pages seem full and rich and busy, in a good way.
I was definitely taught not to use long quotations when I was a student! And yes, yes, she makes so much room for others. For the writers she's quoting/thinking alongside, and for her readers. I feel like this unfolding that happens on p. 156 is a great example of slowness and, as you said, generosity. It feels like she really wants readers to understand, to come along with her, and that's why she's taking so much time/space with paraphrasing and questioning: she wants us to get it. Or maybe it's not a singular "it", but she wants us to think, feel, and imagine with her, and to feel like we *can* do this. Which is such a contrast to texts that don't seem to have that intent, that present their content in a way that seems to want to prove a sort of rightness rather than opening things up to questioning and exploration and collaboration.
In a way, she captures what it's like to be a reader -- we see her "digesting" or processing the books and essays she reads and information she comes across in a way that allows us to understand them too (at least, to a certain extent).
So true. And since we're all such readers, this feels like a deep pleasure of being with her work—being invited into what it's like for her, KB, as a reader, getting to be in relationship to her reading life.
TLA, p. 151-153: "Because it's true, a translator may well feel deeply about a given piece of writing, she may have made friends with it, she may have made a short-term or lifelong companion out of it, she may have fallen in some straightforward or complicated way in love with it, but none of this will have any necessary bearing on whether she -- or indeed her work -- will be loved back."
Heartbreaking, at least a little bit! From this section, I'm also thinking about the uncertainty about what gets translated, how it comes down to -- at least in part -- what the translator loves and wants to spend time with. The same principle is true more generally for what gets published, what gets reviewed, what gets read, what gets recommended, what wins awards -- there's so much chance involved!
I was very surprised by the Lydia Davis section. For some reason, I had assumed she liked Madame Bovary! since she translated it! but that's obviously not the case. For some reason with the classics, I always assume the translator did it out of love but clearly, this isn't true. Translating the classics can just be paying work (and enjoying the difficulty of it but still not really liking it) just like anything else.
Yes, that was fascinating! I loved Briggs's discussion of how which books a translator loves can determine which books get translated instead of other books, but it's not always a matter of love. I appreciate how she acknowledges the various motivations that go into translating -- it's work, but sometimes it can feel closer to a leisure activity, and other times ... it's just work.
Barthes, Session of March 10, 1979: I'm curious about the inclusion of the labyrinth lectures in this book on the preparation of the novel, especially since Barthes's two lectures were bookends for a series of lectures on the labyrinth we aren't given. I suppose they were included because of chronology and thoroughness, the desire to translate all Barthes's lectures?
Anyway, the closing thoughts on the labyrinth, the session of March 10, 1979, cracked me up because the session begins with a long explanation of why Barthes CAN'T conclude. That feels like a very Barthesian move. His reasons make sense and are fascinating, and include the wonderful idea of not wanting to give anything "metalinguistic treatment" for philosophical reasons that include not wanting to suppress the subject. He doesn't want to generalize, I take this to mean, because generalizations inevitably distort and suppress the subject at hand. He wants the lectures to sit next to each other and leave it at that. (Or, in our case, the lectures are a void that he's, for the most part, leaving alone.)
The lecture moves on to the personal resonances of the labyrinth -- about his lost mother, of course -- also a very Barthesian move. And it ends with a question, a question that brings us back full circle: "Where does a labyrinth begin?"
Do we know if that lecture series actually happened? I searched for Detienne’s lecture and found nothing and I’d have thought it would have been important enough to be captured somewhere.
There's a footnote to the conclusion that mentions a sound recording of the Mannoni lecture, but otherwise, I have no idea. I'm going to ask on Twitter and Bluesky (one thing that Twitter might be good for!).
Finally got around to my thoughts on the week - I do mean week 7! https://open.substack.com/pub/keeperofthecats/p/katebriggs24-week-6?r=19i5wa&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
I really like how Barthes explores the “chiming” of words, what he calls an “immediate phenomenology of the word.” (114) He later seems to suggest that the meanings that “chime” can be labyrinthian in their differences from one person to another or one context or another. I really like the idea of a narrative as a labyrinth. Though, I need to admit that some of the reading of “The Metaphor of the Labyrinth” seemed labyrinthian to me, and I found myself a bit lost and seemingly unable to find my way out!
I got a little nervous starting the section on the labyrinth, nervous about being able to understand it, although once I figured out it it's not directly related to the haiku/novel arguments, I let myself not understand everything 100% and felt okay about it. But there were great ideas in that section, and I love the idea of narrative as a labyrinth too -- so many forking paths to follow.
I love the note from Richard Howard about how Barthes didn’t really care about the translations. Instead of seeing this as morally suspect in some way, I actually think that it points to a kind of humility. He felt that whatever Howard could do was better than what he had done: he had already forgotten it. (Briggs, 156)
I also like that the lectures were published in translation out of order because of a number of factors, but also because of translator preference! (Briggs, 155)
Yes, I liked that point about the out-of-order translations -- and I would rather have the translations out of order if, in exchange, it means the translator is especially excited about the project they are taking on and are doing it less out of sense of obligation.
One of the many things I'm noticing/appreciating/admiring in TLA is the way Briggs circles back to certain ideas and phrases and questions, making my reading experience of her text feel like a spiral—each time we return to a particular thought, it appears in a different light, because of what's come in between the repetitions, because the context has shifted even just slightly. Or: every time a phrase returns, it's deepened, changed. For example, the idea of some aspect of translation, or the way translation happens in the world being "really ridiculous, maybe. But there it is." Underneath this, I hear that of course it's NOT ridiculous at all, it's a matter of care and concern and importance... and at the same time, it's kind of ridiculous! Or at least, it's random or haphazard; it's hard, maybe impossible, to really explain WHY things happen in translation the way they do. (This is reminding me of Rebecca writing about the haphazard nature of translation—what gets translated, and by whom, and when—it all feels so unpredictable.) I do love this aspect of KB's text, this circling back, and I wonder if her use of repetition contributes to the feeling of slowness in TLA (which I also love), of inclusiveness, wanting to proceed slowly enough so that the reader can come along and isn't left behind. It's like saying, here's this idea again, we've been here before, but things are maybe a little different now. Like her use of questions and the way her thinking unfolds on the page, this practice of repetition feels inherently generous to me.
I like that analogy of the spiral, the repetition, but always with a difference of some kind. I think it captures the feeling of consciousness, of the way it feels in my brain sometimes (more than a "stream-of-consciousness" novel does) when ideas come back again and again, in different contexts and after new experiences, so they aren't quite the same. But yes, it's also a way of including the reader -- it feels like she's giving the reader an experience of time that is maybe similar to her own experience of time, time to absorb, to rethink, to complicate and deepen, to question, to live with. Time to feel the idea developing, maybe in a similar way to how she developed the ideas. Time to allow new examples to enter one's life.
Yes! My brain works this way sometimes too—it's a great description of what her writing does, very apt. I love "time to allow new example's to enter one's life."