A strange, choppy essay by Murray Bail that’s ostensibly a review of the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of Anna Karenina (and if you’re going to call yourself Volokhonsky instead of Volokhonskaya, why Karenina rather than the Karenin Nabokov was so keen on? but I digress) but is really a series of thoughts on literature and translation. It’s tricked out with a nutty false dichotomy between “Europe” and “English or American culture,” and it comes to a stop without actually ending, but there are enough nice bits along the way it’s worth a read:
It is only a matter of time in a Russian novel before a sturgeon arrives on a plate, a “fine sturgeon” or a “large sturgeon”. It is like the appearance of bicycles in Irish novels, or the dog wagging its tail in every other Tom Roberts painting. The sturgeon makes its entrance on a plate held by an old footman in a greasy shirt. At other times a landlord of an inn brings the fish half cold to a filthy table. At a rundown estate a traveller is ushered into the presence of the impoverished landowner, tucking into a local sturgeon (Gogol). Russian characters have healthy appetites. They’ve been travelling on bad roads, in badly sprung carriages. In the 1950s, in Adelaide, reading about “black bread” sounded not tasty at all, but peasant-poor, positively wretched; in a Russian novel it coloured the domestic scene – made it extra-foreign. Where else in literature do you find a languid landowner pondering a pleasantly wasted life, while at the same time reaching out, as if for another slice of sturgeon, for some essential, life-saving truth?
(Via wood s lot.)
> In the 1950s, in Adelaide, reading about “black bread” sounded not tasty at all
One plainly sees that the author has never tasted a real black bread – with, well, a sturgeon (or, better yet, a sturgeon caviar) on top of it (separated by a real Kostroma butter).
Dima, may be a piece should be attached to every book, for a polyphonic experience?
And why not extend this tasty practice to publishing of the Japanese, French and Thai novels?
Well, there is a problem with preservation there. While one may try and attach a Strasburg pie to every copy of “Evgeniy Onegin”, attaching a studgeon to Gogol’s sounds to me like a, well, a rotten idea.
You of all people should’ve known: ideas and their development/implementation are two different cookies altogether.
Tatyana, I like that idea. Surely in this modern age they can find a way to keep foodstuffs fresh until the book/package is opened/unsealed? It opens a whole new field of literary appreciation.
Imagine, reading Proust AND partaking of Madelains…
Well, for one thing, this would kill off the second hand books business. It will additionally delay the greatly desired (pricewise) paperbacks by an additional milestone (or more): it will be first the hardcover a la carte, then hardcover diet, then hardcover sugar free – only then you can hope to get a paperback.
It does give a whole new meaning to the word bookworm though. Oh, and devouring books – yes, that’s nice. “This War and Peace gives me the indigestion of my life”.
Perhaps each bookstore should have a deli annex. Cucumber sandwiches for Oscar Wilde. Hams, sausages, and tripes for Rabelais. Cheeses and dry bread for Don Quixote. Peacock tongues and slave-fattened eels for Petronius.
Actually, this sounds like a proper yuppy idea, except for the book-reading part. Expect it to happen.
Imagine, reading Proust AND partaking of Madelains…
This is actually a very common scene around the coffee and snacks machines inside the Sorbonne (when I still was pretending to learn the high ‘n’ noble quintessence of Littérature française, we used to have fun “playing Proust” during class breaks: a madeleine, a white plastic glass of oversugared powder tea and a pair of dreamy eyes…).
“Perhaps each bookstore should have a deli annex. Cucumber sandwiches for Oscar Wilde. Hams, sausages, and tripes for Rabelais. Cheeses and dry bread for Don Quixote. Peacock tongues and slave-fattened eels for Petronius.”
Yum! Can’t wait until they take on The Dream of the Red Chamber!
This brings me back to an idea I’ve been working on for a long time, which is to print books on pancakes instead of paper. You conserve the world’s forests; and if you are not satisfied with the book as reading material you can use it for a snack instead. I need to get financing but I think it could be a real hit.
Jeremy: what, like edible underwear?
Mmm… Tolstoy on blini, Roth on latkes…
Mmm… Tolstoy on blini, Roth on latkes…
(Aha. LH on a roll.)