For I have lost –for the first time in my life– a book. Last week I was reading again Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, which is fascinating, to say the least; I was undoubtedly feeling horrified by Roger Chillingworth, pitied upon Reverend Dimmesdale, at times fascinated and scared before Pearl, and both moved and amazed by Hester's integrity and beauty. And I was delighted, enjoying every word and Hawthorne's tidy prose. Sometimes I even gave it a go and translated a sentence for myself, to hear it resound; I dare believe such is translation's first step and need: feeling the translation for oneself.
But then I received a call while buying my groceries, and I forgot the book in the cart. Rather than anger, I was feeling shame: I couldn't believe I had left behind my book and not notice until past twenty minutes. A search quest in downtown libraries is under plans now.
The next day I picked Melville's Moby-Dick, thinking about keeping the pace and the English reading, quite naively for I wasn't aware about the history behind the novels. I got caught with Moby-Dick some three years ago while reading a literature (mostly poetry) and art magazine: there was a bilingual excerpt of "The Whiteness of the Whale" (chapter 42) which I found almost unreadable due to such an inconsistent and careless translation. Nevertheless, the magazine is still an outstanding piece in my library: it is awful editing, but the compilation and the love behind the effort are beautiful.
On going through the introduction (which I don't normally do: I try to shed light by my own means rather by someone else's effort) I found not only that Melville and Hawthorne were contemporaries, but friends, that they had commented each other, and that Melville (being a most restless man) considered Hawthorne's literature somehow humiliated and stranded to British canonical writings and culture. But most of all, I found this:
The next day I picked Melville's Moby-Dick, thinking about keeping the pace and the English reading, quite naively for I wasn't aware about the history behind the novels. I got caught with Moby-Dick some three years ago while reading a literature (mostly poetry) and art magazine: there was a bilingual excerpt of "The Whiteness of the Whale" (chapter 42) which I found almost unreadable due to such an inconsistent and careless translation. Nevertheless, the magazine is still an outstanding piece in my library: it is awful editing, but the compilation and the love behind the effort are beautiful.
On going through the introduction (which I don't normally do: I try to shed light by my own means rather by someone else's effort) I found not only that Melville and Hawthorne were contemporaries, but friends, that they had commented each other, and that Melville (being a most restless man) considered Hawthorne's literature somehow humiliated and stranded to British canonical writings and culture. But most of all, I found this:
IN TOKEN
OF MY ADMIRATION FOR HIS GENIUS,
This Book is Inscribed
TO
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
Paul Romano's artwork for Mastodon's Leviathan. Haven't heard it yet. Soon.
OF MY ADMIRATION FOR HIS GENIUS,
This Book is Inscribed
TO
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
Paul Romano's artwork for Mastodon's Leviathan. Haven't heard it yet. Soon.
2 comentarios:
Ishmael
So sorry for your lost (there is always a first time) Soon, you will recover it, i hope so,
Big friends, big books
Courius, why didn't you pick another book?
Welcome back
A nosy friend
Even though I wasn't aware of the relations between both books, I knew the language was similar due to the time they were written. So it was a sort of natural to pick Moby-Dick. On the other hand, there aren't many English books in my library.
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