Laura Esther Wolfson’s NY Times essay on staying in touch with exes (archived) is delightfully written and, I would say, good life advice, but this is the bit that made me post about it:
There’s another one I can still bring to the brink of ecstasy when he comes to my place. I do it now by reading out snippets of Tolstoy, Chekhov or Babel in the original. I’m a Russian translator, and on our first date, we bonded over our love of Russian literature. Next, I provide an off-the-cuff rendition in English, and then we look at several other translations and compare.
“I’ll never be able to do this with anyone else,” he said tearfully when he broke up with me, gesturing to my shelves of Russian books. It seems that he was right about that, because when the dust settled, we revived our little reading club.
It reminds me of Wanda pleading “Say something in Russian!” in A Fish Called Wanda.
Seconded. [to a post from Stu that seems to have disappeared]
What about he broke up with me does she not understand? The phrasing suggests he was the active breaker-upper, despite she having plenty of grounds for outthrowing him. (Of course we’re only getting one side of the story.)
Also, what is a monthly Zoom cocktail gathering and in what sense does participating count as ‘seeing’ someone?
“Smell you later!”
(Simpsons episode partly set in the future)
AntC: I decided I shouldn’t spoil the party with that comment:
All so brittle and worldly and menschy. Cringe.
If I ever become like that, please shoot me without asking.
Comparing translations is no excuse. But it wows ’em I guess. Straight out of Agatha All Along.
I’ve seen that movie. John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Palin, eating the tropical fish …. Looking through the IMDb quotes, I remember nothing of any of the plot. This seems portentous
Also, what is a monthly Zoom cocktail gathering and in what sense does participating count as ‘seeing’ someone?
Question 2 suggests Question 1 was rhetorical
I enjoyed A Fish Called Wanda, though I have no burning desire to see it again. I think it belongs to the perfectly honorable category of works where the sensible thing its just to let the plot wash over you, because the plot is just not the point.
Like (famously) The Big Sleep, where Raymond Chandler himself had no idea who killed one of the minor characters. Or (si parva licet componere magnis), Le Nozze di Figaro, which I just saw again a couple of days ago. Fatal mistake to worry about how many layers deep you are in deception and mutual misunderstanding when you should just be enjoying the music (and as I was saying to my wife, at any one time, the libretto does quite a good job of telling you what’s going on at that particular instant; it’s only when you try to put it in a larger context that your brain starts melting. I’m prepared to take it on trust that the plot does make sense …)
This seems portentous
Not really. Russia is a state in serious and apparently terminal decline. Which is why European inability to act unilaterally is so disturbing.
In retrospect ending up a province of the Russian Empire seems overly optimistic. More likely we will all end up the subjects of oligarchs using AI and drones to keep us under control as we fight for vanishing resources.