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Currently at UW: -2.4. High today: 1.6. If the forecasts come out right, tomorrow will be the first day of 2007 that doesn't break freezing. Yesterday was the first day I saw snow falling since the day it snowed on the emus.
Spent several hours, last night on the net and then tonight at the library, trying to figure out what the difference is between the German nouns "Trank" and "Trunk", because Heidegger, in "The Thing", uses "Trank" to refer to drink given to gods and "Trunk" to refer to drink ordinarily drunk by mortals, and the translator of Poetry, Language, Thought has "libation" for "Trank", which is, obviously, an interpretive gloss, and skews the sense of the passage. I have now confirmed more or less to my satisfaction my original suspicion that the main difference between "Trank" and "Trunk" is that "Trunk" has connotations of drunkennes which "Trank" lacks. "Trank" is just drink; "Trunk" is "drink". Mostly. Apparently.
If I only had one good German.... (EDIT, since I'm in here editing my grammar anyway: one good German has now popped up elsenet to reconfirm my suspicion. Hooray, and so forth.)
So much damage is done by translators who think they know what's going on when they actually don't (and this is the second serious problem I've found with the translation of this essay; the other is a plain grammatical mistake, though the kind of mistake you could only make through a failure of interpretation. It has: "The divinities are the beckoning messengers of the godhead. Out of the hidden sway of the divinities, the god emerges as what he is." "Divinities" in the second sentence translates a singular pronoun; the pronoun actually refers to the godhead, not the divinities. The strange thing is that the translator got this right in a passage which is, to that extent, identical, in another essay; if he hadn't, I certainly never would've noticed there was something wrong with the passage in "The Thing".) But what are you supposed to do, as a translator? Provide alternate translations of every word, sentence, paragraph ... ?
Read that TNR article about why a Mormon such as Mitt Romney shouldn't be president. A Mormon such as Mitt Romney shouldn't be president because What The Prophet Says Goes!, and this is different from the old (shameful!) argument that What The Pope Says Goes! because Mormonism doesn't have a natural law tradition like Catholicism, for a long time, has had. Which is a nice little argument, but I think it misses a basic point about Religion in America, which that "Islamic veils" poll (and some other related polls scattered around the Angus Reid site, like one that found Americans much less likely than Europeans to think blasphemy should be outlawed, despite the fact that many more Americans than Europeans claim they believe in God) illustrates strikingly: Americans, by and large, do not take their religion seriously. This, I have come to suspect, is one of the sources of the Great Miscalculation about Iraq: religious Americans did not count on religious Iraqis actually taking their own religion seriously; the United States is so deeply liberal--in the sense of being willing to accommodate the beliefs and lifestyles of others--that many Americans simply can't comprehend that it is possible for anyone but singularly evil individuals, like Osama and Saddam, not to be liberal. (The TNR article, incidentally, is subtitled something like: "Mitt Romney takes his religion seriously. Maybe you should, too." Well, sure; maybe he even takes it as seriously as Bush takes his. And just how seriously is that?)
Which leads into another thing I picked up today: an article in The Modern Age called "Strauss's Secret". Strauss's Secret, it turns out, is that he ain't got religion, and so he has no answers to questions about The Good. (There are those who think that this is also Bush's Secret. I suspect he's got religion; he just doesn't take it seriously. Half-seriously, maybe.) So, the upshot is, it's good to have religion, because then you have answers to questions about The Good. Well, then, good for you.
And it leads in another direction--the Americans Are Crazy direction--into the Dancing with the Stars roadshow, which, I saw in today's Star, is in Toronto now. There was a big picture on the front of the A&E section, with three guys in black pants and white shirts, and three women in little ragged things made of glittery pink tassels. So, look, these celebrity dancing shows, they're largely a way to get shimmying women mostly naked in such a way that it's officially wholesome, right? Like cheerleaders. (And don't the women mostly lose in these shows because they's hoes? I mean, hoes is good to look at, but ya don't vote for no ho, yo. But really: there's something very disturbing about the women on these shows, wholesomely dancing the sex. Paging Dr. Freud?)
I have had two Pink Lady apples this week. They were both very sour. Pink Lady apples are now officially on my fruit blacklist. Well, greylist. You'd have to just about kill me to get me to eat a grapefruit. My third Pink Lady apple, however, I will, grudgingly, eat.
Spent several hours, last night on the net and then tonight at the library, trying to figure out what the difference is between the German nouns "Trank" and "Trunk", because Heidegger, in "The Thing", uses "Trank" to refer to drink given to gods and "Trunk" to refer to drink ordinarily drunk by mortals, and the translator of Poetry, Language, Thought has "libation" for "Trank", which is, obviously, an interpretive gloss, and skews the sense of the passage. I have now confirmed more or less to my satisfaction my original suspicion that the main difference between "Trank" and "Trunk" is that "Trunk" has connotations of drunkennes which "Trank" lacks. "Trank" is just drink; "Trunk" is "drink". Mostly. Apparently.
If I only had one good German.... (EDIT, since I'm in here editing my grammar anyway: one good German has now popped up elsenet to reconfirm my suspicion. Hooray, and so forth.)
So much damage is done by translators who think they know what's going on when they actually don't (and this is the second serious problem I've found with the translation of this essay; the other is a plain grammatical mistake, though the kind of mistake you could only make through a failure of interpretation. It has: "The divinities are the beckoning messengers of the godhead. Out of the hidden sway of the divinities, the god emerges as what he is." "Divinities" in the second sentence translates a singular pronoun; the pronoun actually refers to the godhead, not the divinities. The strange thing is that the translator got this right in a passage which is, to that extent, identical, in another essay; if he hadn't, I certainly never would've noticed there was something wrong with the passage in "The Thing".) But what are you supposed to do, as a translator? Provide alternate translations of every word, sentence, paragraph ... ?
Read that TNR article about why a Mormon such as Mitt Romney shouldn't be president. A Mormon such as Mitt Romney shouldn't be president because What The Prophet Says Goes!, and this is different from the old (shameful!) argument that What The Pope Says Goes! because Mormonism doesn't have a natural law tradition like Catholicism, for a long time, has had. Which is a nice little argument, but I think it misses a basic point about Religion in America, which that "Islamic veils" poll (and some other related polls scattered around the Angus Reid site, like one that found Americans much less likely than Europeans to think blasphemy should be outlawed, despite the fact that many more Americans than Europeans claim they believe in God) illustrates strikingly: Americans, by and large, do not take their religion seriously. This, I have come to suspect, is one of the sources of the Great Miscalculation about Iraq: religious Americans did not count on religious Iraqis actually taking their own religion seriously; the United States is so deeply liberal--in the sense of being willing to accommodate the beliefs and lifestyles of others--that many Americans simply can't comprehend that it is possible for anyone but singularly evil individuals, like Osama and Saddam, not to be liberal. (The TNR article, incidentally, is subtitled something like: "Mitt Romney takes his religion seriously. Maybe you should, too." Well, sure; maybe he even takes it as seriously as Bush takes his. And just how seriously is that?)
Which leads into another thing I picked up today: an article in The Modern Age called "Strauss's Secret". Strauss's Secret, it turns out, is that he ain't got religion, and so he has no answers to questions about The Good. (There are those who think that this is also Bush's Secret. I suspect he's got religion; he just doesn't take it seriously. Half-seriously, maybe.) So, the upshot is, it's good to have religion, because then you have answers to questions about The Good. Well, then, good for you.
And it leads in another direction--the Americans Are Crazy direction--into the Dancing with the Stars roadshow, which, I saw in today's Star, is in Toronto now. There was a big picture on the front of the A&E section, with three guys in black pants and white shirts, and three women in little ragged things made of glittery pink tassels. So, look, these celebrity dancing shows, they're largely a way to get shimmying women mostly naked in such a way that it's officially wholesome, right? Like cheerleaders. (And don't the women mostly lose in these shows because they's hoes? I mean, hoes is good to look at, but ya don't vote for no ho, yo. But really: there's something very disturbing about the women on these shows, wholesomely dancing the sex. Paging Dr. Freud?)
I have had two Pink Lady apples this week. They were both very sour. Pink Lady apples are now officially on my fruit blacklist. Well, greylist. You'd have to just about kill me to get me to eat a grapefruit. My third Pink Lady apple, however, I will, grudgingly, eat.
