Absentmindedness

This past weekend I served as a calcant for several hours. A calcant (non-organists can be forgiven for not knowing the terminology), from the Latin calcare, "to tread", is the unfortunate fellow whose job it is to pump the bellows to supply wind pressure to an organ's pipes. It is a dull task that is at the same time quite unforgiving of lapses in concentration, for if the wind lags everyone in the audience will hear it. In former times, I suppose, it was the duty of every apprentice-organist to pump the bellows; perhaps it is only fitting I should have to do it. Bach surely served as calcant for his teacher Böhm, don't you think?

Calcants' minds wander. Indeed, my mind has been elsewhere much of the time these past few weeks. There is the past: on Monday the weather reminded me so much of early spring in Vienna that I experienced the first palpable longing for that city I've felt in more than a year. When will I walk 'round the Ringstraße again; when shall I climb Kahlenberg; when shall I eat at Schnitzel King or Café Prückel? I want to go back before I forget how to use the subway or order a Hot-Dog.

There is also the future to distract me. I come from a long line of worriers, and I have begun to wonder about the sort of job I'll get after I am an accredited Master of Sacred Music. My natural inclination — one not yet dulled by the unquestioned assumptions of an incurably mobile society — is to go home. Ah, but I wonder what it will be like, trying to make good music and good liturgy in a place where ignorance and poor taste are so entrenched. I am willing to teach, of course, but one cannot change a culture singlehandedly.

In any case, I acknowledge I really ought to be thinking about the present. All shall be well, and all that.

O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas

O Thou whose pow'r o'er moving worlds presides,
Whose voice created, and whose wisdom guides,
On darkling man in pure effulgence shine,
And cheer the clouded mind with light divine.
'Tis thine alone to calm the pious breast
With silent confidence and holy rest:
From thee, great God, we spring, to thee we tend,
Path, motive, guide, original, and end.

— Dr Johnson, after Boethius (Consolatio Philosophiae, Book III §9)

Admirable Words, Vol. I

1. Autochthonous
   
2. Globule
   
3. Gumption
   
4. Lambaste
   
5. Lugubrious
   
6. Muliebrity
   
7. Protuberance
   
8. Skulduggery
   
9. Snickersnee (or: Snicker-snee)
   
10. Unguent

On Translating Borges

For what amounts to years, now, I have been attempting to translate a lecture given by Jorge Luis Borges on the Book of Job. (He's got some interesting ideas about it, as it so happens.) Every time I near completion, however, I find myself dissatisfied with the result. It is invariably either unfaithful to the original or awkward-sounding in English. (One will note that often Borges used Spanish words to unusual effect. But the English-speaking reader is not aware of this and will likely attribute it to poor translation.) Consider, if you will, the opening paragraph — insofar as an oral lecture can be divided into paragraphs:

A pesar de la hospitalidad que siento en ustedes me considero un poco intruso. Pero hay dos razones que me hacen mitigar esa impresión. Una de las razones es que yo he sido criado dentro de la fe cristiana y la cultura occidental; la cristiandad, más allá de nuestras convicciones o de nuestras dudas personales, es una malgama de dos naciones que me parecen esenciales para el mundo occidental. Esas son: Israel (el cristianismo procede de Israel) y Grecia. Más allá de las vicisitudes de nuestra sangre, de nuestra múltiple sangre, ya que tenemos dos padres, cuatro abuelos, etc. — en progresión geométrica — y ya que Roma fue una suerte de extensión del helenismo, creo que todos, por el mero hecho de pertener a la cultura occidental, somos hebreos y griegos. De modo que algún derecho me asiste hoy al hablar sobre el Libro de Job, aunque ignore la lengua hebrea y aunque no he podido leer el texto original y los comentarios Rabínicos.

And here is my attempt at a translation:

Despite the hospitality I sense in all of you, I consider myself rather intrusive. But there are two reasons that mitigate this impression of mine. One of them is that I have been raised in the Christian faith and in western culture; Christianity, notwithstanding our personal beliefs or doubts, is an amalgam of two nations that seem to me essential to the western world. They are: Israel (Christianity arose out of Israel) and Greece. Regardless of the vicissitudes of our blood, out of our multiple heritages, since we have two parents, four grandparents, etc. — in a geometrical progression — and since Rome was a sort of extension of Hellenism, I believe that all of us, by the mere fact of belonging to western culture, are Hebrews and Greeks. As a result, I have a certain right to speak today about the Book of Job, though I know no Hebrew and though I have not been able to read the original text nor its Rabbinical commentaries.

What is one to do? Part of the problem is that spoken sentences can be far longer than their written counterparts before becoming excessive; one can nest parentheticals (as I am wont to do) without too badly breaking up the flow of a spoken idea, but when written this becomes tiresome after a while, unless you read lots of James and must therefore enjoy endless sentences.

The chief problem, I suppose, is that Borges's style is deliberately obscure. In a review of five new Borges anthologies, Martin Schifino (interesting surname, that) explains this well:

[Alfred] MacAdam describes Borges's early style as "tortuous" and his vocabulary as "rarefied". [Suzanne] Levine calls the writing of his essays "radical" and even "bizarre to those who read him in Spanish today". Both are right in general. But it is a matter of detail in which way Borges "replays the Latinate prose of the Baroque era", and perhaps the best way to convey this might not be to "improvise a rococo English" – an intention declared, but fortunately never carried out, by Levine. The baroque influence can be felt, sure enough, in Borges's inkhorn terms, but his rhetorical habits are much closer to home: plain Edwardian. He sounds a little like Kipling, and a lot like Chesterton. His essays are full of Chestertonian throat-clearing and oratorical flourishes. Part of the challenge for translators may be to make new an existing manner that has fallen out of favour. In any case, more resources from the English tradition will need mining if Borges's big voice is to be fully energized.

The best way to translate Borges, then? Read more Chesterton. Borges was famously fond of him, anyway.

Flor Tropical, por D.C. Hawley

En el aro ardiente que ciñe el trópico
un día andaba con la cara al sol
cuando una liana me detuvo el paso,
una liana que llevaba una flor:
flor tan bella que no pude dejarla;
me la llevé de esas tierras del sol,
yo me la llevé a mis llanos helados,
tierras frías calentadas de amor,
y entre las nieves de llanos lejanos
revivía la liana y floreció.

Y ahora que las nieves de mis setenta
largos inviernos cubriéndome están,
soy como la casa en tierras del norte:
mientras más helada, más calor da.
Sobre el llano se amontona la nieve;
dentro aún guardo mi flor tropical.

Lucky Jim

I took advantage of the Schneetag today to finish Kingsley Amis's first novel, Lucky Jim. (I have added to my list of aliases the name "Kingsley"; why does no one name their son Kingsley nowadays?) The book is really quite funny. It is about the goings-on at a university. As anyone who has attended an institution of "higher" "education" can tell you, academics are generally an absurd lot: their foibles call out to be lampooned, and Amis is mercilessly accurate. Though the novel can be said to have a protagonist (the titular Jim), all of the characters therein are for the most part contemptible, loathsome, and unpleasant. The book is a rogues' gallery of all the worst types of people one can find on a college campus: the soporific tenured professor (whose natural habitat is the history or English department), the incompetent and disinterested junior professor, the perpetually-medicated and emotionally unstable female academic, the spiteful colleague, the pretentious and self-absorbed artiste...

One might think that such a book, lacking any character of any virtue whatsoëver, would be a depressing read. On the contrary: it is the funniest book I've read in a good long while. Whether you be a misanthrope or not, it is still gratifying to see absurd pomposity — the sort of behavior any college student can identify — mocked.

High-Church Lutherans, eh?

Yesterday evening I attended Trinity Lutheran Church (LCMS) over in Elkhart. (Remember that accompaniment job I mentioned? Some of the children were singing an anthem at the service and I accompanied them.) It was the second most high-church Lutheran service I have ever attended. (The highest-church Lutherans I have encountered so far are at Emmaus Lutheran — also LCMS, incidentally — where the pastor goes so far as to preside ad orientem.) They have a rather unusual liturgy at Trinity. Though it's clearly based on the standard Lutheran order of worship, there are many elements taken from Roman Catholicism. (An aside: these are the sort of Lutherans, I suspect, for whom the adjective "Roman" must be appended to "Catholic", to avoid confusion; like Anglo-Catholics, these Lutherans affirm their membership in the one holy catholic and apostolic church. Why should the Papists have a monopoly on the word "catholic"?) I was most surprised to find the Domine non sum dignus, an admirable pre-Communion prayer I have only heard in R.C. Masses: "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed." (Never mind that it's a poor translation of the Latin. At least they're using it.) Now, I have heard that this particular prayer was added at the Council of Trent (a concession, of sorts, to emphasize that, despite past abuses, the Church never taught the doctrine of salvation by works alone). We have, then, cross-fertilization of Roman Catholic and Lutheran liturgies, post-Reformation! Ecumenically speaking, I see no reason why this is a bad thing. If we can agree on so much (on the Real Presence in the Eucharist, on the Justification of sinners, on the value of meaningful — which is to say, liturgical — liturgy), then perhaps there is cause for optimism. I really cannot abide the sort of chauvinistic Christian who is so committed to his own denomination that he sees no benefit in ecumenical dialogue. Indeed, the desire to help heal the rifts of the Reformation is one of the chief fruits of the Second Vatican Council. Admittedly, we may regret aspects of the implementation of ideas from Vatican II (guitars, bad vestments, et al.), but it is vital that we hold on to the impetus to work towards reunification of the sundered Christian churches. Good liturgy is an important way to move towards this goal.

Writer's Voice

Recently I've been getting into E.B. White's (yes, he of Charlotte's Web; also, the White of Strunk & White) book of essays, One Man's Meat. It is rather good, so far. The writing, at least, is well-crafted. Surely you know the feeling, when beginning a book, of making the acquaintance of a particular voice, a personality. It is even better when that voice is not only unique but also agreeable. (There are enough voices that are distinctive but towards which I feel little natural affinity: Hemingway, or Wilde. That's not to say I dislike The Sun Also Rises — and indeed, I would place The Picture of Dorian Gray among my top thirty favorite books — but I can't imagine having a particularly satisfying conversation with either of those authors. Perhaps it is a matter of temperament, or childhood inculcation. I will always enjoy that chummy, donnish tone of C.S. Lewis, but then, the Narnia books were my constant companions when I was young.) E.B. White's voice is honest and simple: earnest without being humorless, occasionally wise without being pompous. If you weren't assigned to read "Once More to the Lake" in school, you simply must go and read it. (I was assigned it, and although being given as homework is generally sufficient to ruin any good thing, I still remember that essay fondly.)

In any case, the man knew what writing is like:

[T]here is nothing harder to estimate than a writer's time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments — moments of sustained creation — when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer's time isn't worth the paper he is not writing anything on.

Acts, Chapter 29

¹And it came to pass, when Paul was in Corinth, he and certain disciples came upon a mob that was stoning an organist.
²And Paul said unto them, “What then hath he done unto thee that his head should be bruised?”
³And the people cried with one voice, “He hath played too loud!
⁴Yea, in the singing of the psalms, he maketh our heads to ring as if they were beaten with hammers.
⁵Behold, he sitteth up high in the loft, and mighty are the pipes and mighty is the noise thereof, and though there be few of us below, he none the less playeth with all the stops, the Assyrian trumpet stop and the stop of the ram’s horn and the stop that soundeth like the sawing of stone, and we cannot hear the words that cometh out of our own mouths.
⁶He always tosseth in variations that confuse us mightily and he playeth loud and discordant and always in a militant tempo, so that we have not time to breathe as we sing.
⁷Lo, he is a plague upon the faith and should be chastised.”
⁸Paul, hearing this, had himself picked up a small stone, and was about to cast it, but he set it down, and bade the organist come forward.
⁹He was a narrow man, sallow of complexion, with dry skin, flaking and thin of hair.
¹⁰And Paul said unto him, “Why hath thou so abused thy brethren?”
¹¹And the organist replied, “I could not hear them singing from where I sat, and therefore played the louder so as to encourage them.”
¹²And Paul turned round to the mob and said loudly, “Let him who has never played an organ cast the first stone.”
¹³And they cast stones for a while until their arms were tired and Paul bade the organist repent and he did.
¹⁴And Paul said unto him, “Thou shalt take up the flute and play it for thirty days, to cleanse thy spirit.”
¹⁵And afterward they returned to Corinth and sang psalms unaccompanied and then had coffee and were refreshed in the faith.

Apparently that's by Garrison Keillor. We saw it posted in Fritts's workshop in Tacoma.

Portland & Seattle

Late Saturday evening I returned from a trip to the Pacific Northwest: the Notre Dame Liturgical Choir went on tour, and I joined them. (My instinct, before we left, was that spending a week with a crowd of undergraduates would be insufferable, but it turned out to be quite enjoyable. One is always pleasantly surprised with Notre Dame students.)

In Portland I got so far as writing the first draft of an entry (dated 12 January), which I present here.

I suppose I might as well send you, dear reader, greetings from Portland, Oregon, where I am currently on tour with the Notre Dame Liturgical Choir. In many ways it is a pleasant city. The climate is at least comfortable: today a dusting of sleet was considered sufficient cause to shut schools down early. (The day we left South Bend, two feet of snow had fallen, with talk of more to come.) I spent several hours at Powell's Books, and suspect that I could've been there considerably longer. (Among the eleven books I purchased were the Bainton biography of Luther, a memoir of Antarctic exploration, a book about Prester John.... I suppose I shall have sufficient reading material for a while, now.)

I'm not sure I saw enough of Seattle to judge it properly, but from what I saw it seems a beautiful city (near-constant rain notwithstanding). Both cities are replete with two extremes of people: hipsters and yuppies on one end, and the homeless on t'other. (A more waggish observer than myself might observe that the only difference in attire between hipsters and the homeless is that hipsters choose to dress that way.) In both cities an awful lot of the people are from Somewhere Else.

There is an undercurrent of desperation in the major cities of the Northwest. For a century-and-a-half now, these cities have been the final destination in that great exodus from points eastward (Europe, New York, Iowa): all those people, leaving home in hopes of a new and better life in the West, find themselves facing the open Pacific, with nowhere else to run to. What is the end result of an incurably mobile society? We might observe it first in the cities of the West.

And yet Portland and Seattle are in several ways quite pleasant. People there are at least aware that recycling and public transit are Good Ideas. The seafood is excellent (a welcome consolation for one who views red meat with increasing — though not yet total — distaste). Though chain restaurants and cafés are ubiquitous, there are also some very good local places to be found nearly everywhere. There are some simply excellent organs to be found in that part of the country: we visited Paul Fritts's workshop and he took us on a tour of several important instruments in the area. (Fritts has the beady eyes and quiet demeanor that are apparently required for organ-builders, but he seems a nice fellow.) All in all, I can't say I've firmly made up my mind about either Portland or Seattle. While there is much to criticize, there's much to admire as well. I hope to travel to both cities again.