Sunday, March 4, 2012

Looking Around This Morning: Southwest to West to Northwest to North to Northeast to East to Southeast










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7 comments:

* said...

Dear Sir,
I report my reading of the journey of 1998 and independently of that i have one or two queries and wonder whether you might kindly be able to look up in your brain how you like Hermann Lenz and further how you like Dragan Velikic whose book Dante Platz I have at home but not read but came across him in previously mentioned st book p87 and so on...so that is all So interesting.... those many books... so many of them...

March 4, 2012 at 10:23 AM
Scott Abbott said...

Dear *,
I indeed like Hermann Lenz, introduced to his work by Peter Handke through Zarko Radakovic. I like his quiet prose and careful observation that is much like, I think, Stifter's work.
Dragan Velikic is Zarko's good friend who is now, I think, the Serbian ambassador to Austria. Dragan's son, all those years ago, was obsessed with trains and had the entire subway/bus/train system of Vienna memorized.
As for Velikic's work, I like it and have three of his books but don't find any of it nearly as satisfying as Zarko Radakovic's experimental work.
And if the speaker on page 87 is agitated that Peter didn't quote Velikic's work, think what it means for him not to quote Zarko's much more interesting texts on the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Peter works with the materials he chooses. Period.
And finally, what kind of idiot complains that another writer hasn't written as he should? In war a writer can't sit by a river? That claim is simply ridiculous. A reader can't dictate. A reader must, as you so nicely noted on your recent blog post, first pay attention to how the work affects her or him and then do justice to the text.
The reader certainly doesn't have to like the work. And she can argue against it. But she can't tell the author how he has to write, especially with absolutes like those on p. 87. Reminds me of the Patriarch in Lessing's Nathan: Tut nichts! Der Jude wird verbrannt!

March 4, 2012 at 12:08 PM
michael morrow said...

I love utah's narrative you have so eloquently quoted today

March 4, 2012 at 1:54 PM
* said...

good morning dear scott.

thank you for telling me what you think about these things. I do think that Lenz is interesting and I never had thought of Vekilic in the context of Handke until now and then I remembered I have a book by him too.

I thought too this discussion on p87 is odd (i just mentioned the page because vekilic was mentioned there, independelty of what they said about him), but maybe, it all got so heated up and everybody has really strong ideas about this whole serbia thing, so people, i guess tend to make judgements or say things about books and writers they might do otherwise...

i had then looked up this 2 chapter of the winterreise (i didn't know you translated it) and saw husserl mentioned with this wonderful concept of Lebenswelt mentioned alongside lenz with this equally wonderful word nebendraussen.... and i thought he has so clearly stated there what he was up to, on p51 (german book) that it still kind of is odd that this book caused such a stir... how did you translate nebendraussen? that can't have been easy...

March 5, 2012 at 2:23 AM
Scott Abbott said...

Here's my translation of that passage (not entirely successful -- the book as a whole was difficult, in a challenging and finally wonderful way):

For what impressed me, without intent and without effort on my part, were almost exclusively third things -- that third that according to the German epic writer Hermann Lenz is to be seen or caught sight of “alongside outside,” and that for the old philosopher (nothing against new philosophers, now and then I would need one) Edmund Husserl is called “the life-world.”

March 5, 2012 at 6:49 AM
* said...

alongside outside.... that's really nice scott, that's a true wordbeauty, really lovely and enchanting.

yes i can imagine this can't have been easy to translate... but with these word moments such as alongside outside, this must have been wonderful too...

March 5, 2012 at 8:45 AM
Scott Abbott said...

that last comment slipped past me till now. glad you liked the alongside outside translation. and however hard it is, i love translating peter's work, largely because of the beauty of his words and rhythms. they put me into a zone i like being in.

March 10, 2012 at 12:23 PM

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