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Papal Speech Deconstruction - thanks Mathew Schmalz

2010-06-14T18:04:00Z

THE PRIESTHOODS DARK VALLEY - Link to Mathew Schmalz article in the Washington Post

While not following the public declarations closely - you know, those pronouncements of denial or relativistic guilt when a new priestly horror comes to light - I have spent some time observing the Catholic Church's efforts to manage an epidemic of wordless acts. Schmalz highlights the idea of created narrative - the stories that may sell or absolve the institution while attending to the guilt. It is stunning how, in these conversations, the experience of the individual is erased within the wider picture of cultures and dominatnt discourses: I suppose as with any horror, the only way to manage the imagery is to eliminate the instance, especially if one has invested a life time of belief in the organization and the litany it has produced.

"The sexual abuse crisis in Catholicism is about many things, of course. But in terms of public discourse--whether it be official Vatican pronouncements, anti-Catholic polemics, or media reporting--the fundamental issue is one of narrative or, more simply, which story one chooses to believe."

words language translation fiction 2010 babylon

2010-04-01T23:01:00Z

when searching today for lit news of translation and babylon I came up with this review from the Toronto Globe and Mail...

Dialogue with the dead

www.theglobeandmail.com/books/review-the-changeling-by-kenzaburo-oe/article1518432/ /> Reviewed by Malcolm Sutton

Globe and Mail Update Published on Wednesday, Mar. 31, 2010
Kenzaburo Oe’s brother-in-law and friend from youth was filmmaker Juzo Itami, known in the West primarily for his 1985 film Tampopo. In 1997, some time after suffering a knife attack by right-wing gangsters he had satirized in one of his films, Itami ended his life by leaping from a building.

Oe begins The Changeling, as in a number of his novels, from insoluble, deeply personal events – here from his friend’s suicide – and turns it through sets of fictional tests, dialogues, memories and perverse events. And here, as in those other novels, Oe edges his readers toward the sublime through his restrained distortions of reality.

The Changeling begins with Kogito, an aging Oe-like writer, wearing oversized headphones, listening to a cassette-tape recording that his brother-in-law, Goro, has prepared for him. Goro’s voice speaks: “I’m going to head over to the Other Side now. … But don’t worry, I’m not going to stop communicating with you.” After slipping into an unpleasant doze, Kogito opens his eyes to find his wife before him, telling him of Goro’s suicide.

w or d s pa c e looks for words a la net

2010-04-01T03:07:00Z

w o r d s p a c e has a daily project: words in the news. Random encounters with news of words reforming and asserting around the world. Today? w o r d spa c e googled "language words news poetry meaning" and got a bit of Shakepeare redux news from Augusta, Ga where ASU's Dr. Walter Evans rewrote Midsummer's to get rid of the bard's phoniness...

">metrospirit.com/index.php?cat=1993101070593169&ShowArticle_ID=11013003100787959 Alice Wynn

...The stories of the four young lovers — Lysander (Michael Lay), Hermia (Chelse Stetz), Demetrius (Eric Mills) and Helena (Elizabeth Miller) — remain the same, although now they have Facebook and Twitter.

“There are a lot of contemporary things happening just like if the play were happening in present day. I think people will be able to take this project for what it is and enjoy it and they’ll be able to understand it completely,” he said.

In translating the story line by line, Evans wanted to make the language more accessible as well as make it more enjoyable for audiences. He did, however, adhere to a few of the rules.

“Our version, where Shakespeare uses prose, we use prose. Where he uses blank verse… we do that. When he has rhyme with eight-syllable lines or three-syllable lines, whether it’s couplets or more complicated rhymes, we imitate that,” Evans said. “When you read Shakespeare, or see one of his plays performed, the poetry sounds phony; it sounds phony because the words sound phony. But when you do it in modern language, it starts sounding like fun.”

Welcome

2010-03-31T02:43:24Z

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