Translation is: difficult; music.

Taped on the wall just above my desk in my apartment in Paris are a picture of Darwin and a picture of Leonard Bernstein. Darwin is there because G.G., a professor of mine once printed it out for me, saying, “I’m not sure why I’m printing this for you, but I think you should have it.” He has enjoyed pride of place ever since. And Leonard Bernstein is there because I’m obsessed with him.

However, I have come to realize that these two serve a metaphorical purpose as well, and I’m keeping them there to remind me about the ethics of translation. It seems to me now that Darwin was a kind of translator, observing nature meticulously, obsessively, in order to re-write it, its genealogy and present state, in another language: a human one. Another of my professors has asked whether translation can be defined as “writing under constraint”; I think that’s really not a bad definition — and Darwin was certainly constrained.

So he reminds me, basically, to just keep at it: keep observing, keep reading, agonize if you must, and then produce something, even if everyone thinks you’re crazy (and they probably will).

The photo of Bernstein I have is my favorite picture of him: conducting, head thrown back, arms upraised, eyes closed, as if at any moment he will transubstantiate and simply turn into music. He once said that his engagement with music was “a total embrace,” that knowledge of a work makes you belong to it, and not it to you.

He was also absolutely fanatical about loyalty to the composer, and remains remarkable among conductors for sounding noticeably different with each composer he conducts. Conducting, he said, is exactly like breathing: the preparation is inhalation, the music is exhalation.

So Lenny, eyes closed, is winking at me and reminding me to be loyal to the composer (or in my case, the writer), and not to engage except by total embrace; the work must live inside you; you must be inhaling and exhaling it.

(For in fact, literary translation is very much like musical interpretation: Bach as played by Perahia is not the same as Bach by Gould, but Bach is always there, and music is always the goal, the necessity.)

Paris: la belle, la bête, et le what now?

Amazing things about Paris:

1) WARM BAGUETTES: The best things ever. Somehow I’ve had incredible luck for three days running, and have never yet walked home with a less-than-piping-hot baguette.

2) Chocolate éclairs: OH. MON. DIEU. The best things ever, after warm baguettes. Didn’t realize they were chocolate when I bought them — I mean, they had chocolate on top, of course — but they had chocolate mousse inside, and I bit into one and almost died right then and there of happiness.

3) Daily life in Paris can be rather complicated and difficult, which means that even tiny victories (e.g. food) can be celebrated all out of proportion. Perfect example: learned today that my super-fancy, cutting-edge contact lens solution is available here, albeit it for €18/ginormous bottle. Danced all the way home.

Less-than-amazing things about Paris:

1) The national telecom company blacklist, which I have inexplicably found myself on. (Now, true, I have had fantasies about getting into some sort of political trouble in a foreign country, but I was hoping to be able to say something more along the lines of, “Ah, Liechtenstein! Yes, I was once deported from Liechtenstein,” and less, “I was blacklisted by every phone company in France for a while.”) After paying an exorbitant fee, I have freed myself from this blacklist, but only after “twelve to fifteen days” of processing time. Because they who control the blacklist don’t have computers, I guess, and so need to inform each other of my acquittal by carrier pigeon.

2) Not nearly enough executive transvestites hanging around with mice, cats, and monkeys.

Incredibly weird things about Paris: there’s only a need for one: Marie Antoinette’s dulcimer-playing android. Android, as in Data, only in the eighteenth century.

You say goodbye, and I say hello

I wrote before about the death of one of my former professors; I’m back in Paris now, which meant I was able to attend her memorial service yesterday, on what would have been her birthday, in one of the rooms that used to be part hers. She would come in — tiny, blonde, often in a red coat and usually dragging a wheeled suitcase — say, “Okay,” and then lecture for ninety minutes, without ever once looking at her notes.

I loved hearing people talk about her. They all said the same things — she was brilliant, she had a terrifying reputation but was a genuinely kind person, she held everyone up to rigidly (but not impossibly) high standards. One of her colleagues, another of my former professors and still a dear friend, said that he was so happy that he was able to teach with her and not be graded by her! I was crying by then, but that phrase made me laugh out loud.

I wish I’d known her better, or at least longer; even so, something about her death has made me deeply sad and I notice her absence on campus and in my life, somehow. Forces of nature don’t go missing; but she has.

A couple of strange things about funerals (or rather, memorials), and this one in particular: (1) I always feel incredibly hungry afterwards. It’s probably just a desire to remind myself that I am still alive, but I devoured two glasses of grapefruit juice, half a pain suisse, and some kind of strange lemon poppyseed cookie right after the service, and in a way this was also part of saying goodbye. (2) This service gave me a chance to see several people I hadn’t seen yet since arriving in Paris, very dear people, old friends, old professors, etc. Having to greet old friends on the occasion of someone’s death is very odd — there’s a slight awkwardness at the joy of it, but the joy is also intensified by the reminder of its fragility.

Afterwards my very dear friend Lily and I spent a long time on the Champs de Mars (the park near campus and directly in front of the Eiffel Tower), catching up and processing each other’s lives, talking about our old and new homes, old and new relationships, and ending up, as always, with Virginia Woolf.

And all of this was, in a symbolic and particularly poignant way, representative of my first two weeks in Paris: made up of goodbyes and hellos.

I’m just starting my MA and realizing (as usual) that I don’t know ANYTHING, that academically I am pulled in about fifty-seven different (and opposite) directions, but that everything is exciting and thrilling, I love my professors, my classmates are v. interesting, intelligent, and fun, and Paris seems like a brand-new city, not at all like it was two years ago, except for the quality of the pastries, which is and always has been exceptional.

Not that anything particular has changed about Paris; minor things only; but I have changed, and all things are ready, if our minds be so.