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November 27, 2007
Methods of Control
There was a stick but there was carrot too. Among the ways in which the Communist authorities in Poland tried to keep writers and creative types in line was by introducing in 1978 a tax free allowance of 144,000 zł per annum for them. This at a time when the average monthly wage was 4 to 6 thousand.
Of course, one feels honour bound to mention that our own Charles Haughey exempted Irish creative artists from income tax in 1969.
Posted by hgrodsk at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)
November 26, 2007
Colour
Thirteen translators of Ryszard Kapuściński contributed their stories to a book that came out last year. It was to have been birthday present, but Kapuściński died before it appeared. The contributions vary widely in subject matter, some not referring at all to translation making it less than essential reading for the student of the subject. But for the student of colourisation there are some pearls. Consider the Albanian translator. He claims to be a hard man to contact. He does not use the internet (like Kapuściński) and as for phones… Well, and what of phones? He claims to have had seven mobile phones. (He has so far lost six of them). It seems to me that anyone who has taken the trouble to replace a mobile phone six times is very much concerned indeed that he should be accessible.
William Brand describes the difficulties in getting Kapuściński published into English. (It seems hard to believe now that someone such as Kapuściński should have had difficulties but American publishers can be conservative – a Pole writing about an Ethiopian???) Brand gives the impression that he “stumbled” over the name of one Helen Wolff while reading a magazine. She was responsible for publishing many English translations, so he goes and looks her up in order to find the publishing house she worked for. The name of that obscure publishing house was Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, which even I, a primitive muck savage from Ireland, have heard of. In fairness, Brand doesn’t go so far as to suggest that HBJ was obscure but he gives the impression that this was a chance find, even though he had already pored through publishing directories and sent the manuscript to a dozen or more of the “best publishers.”
An aside: did you know that the German translation of Cesarz (The Emperor) is König der Könige (King of Kings)? I mention this because Kapuściński also wrote a book – you might have heard of it – called Szachinszach (The Shah of Shahs – or in other words: the King of Kings).
The Bulgarian translator was even worse than the American. In telling her story she is careful to state that she did not belong to the “guild” of translators. Like all self-respecting artists, then, she was an outsider. But read on: it turns out that a personal friend of hers is the director of a large publishing house. If we are to believe her, she only thought of contacting him two years after deciding to translate Ryszard Kapuściński and after he (the director) had repeatedly asked her to recommend good Polish translators – the very circle of people she claims to have been excluded from. Also, an old college friend works in the same publishing house – in fact she has contacts all over the place, including a well-known poet and translator and deputy director of another publishing company.
The Finnish translator recalls his nervousness at first contacting Kapuściński. He is nervous because he has to cheekily ask the writer for the finished manuscript of his latest book in a hurry because he (the Finn) is leaving Warsaw. Why? This is 1992. Why could the manuscript not be posted?
And finally, I would like to state that I have never read a book straight through in one sitting.
Posted by hgrodsk at 11:23 AM | Comments (1)
November 22, 2007
Travel Writing
Ukraine is a land of contrasts. No wait - the past is a constant companion in Ukraine. Or how about Ukraine is the Montana of Europe? A trip to Ukraine is a trip back in time? Awful stuff but people seem to like it. According to Google Chile, Guinea (“the Switzerland of Africa”), Kansas, Jamaica, Iran, Mozambique, Brazil, South Africa, Quebec, India and – I don’t have time to check the other 71,700 hits – are all “lands of contrasts.” So since people like it, let me say that in describing my hotel room I would have recourse to such words as “ancient,” “aging,” “Soviet-era,” and “antediluvian.” The glint of metal in mouths, pot-holed roads, vodka, street markets, derelict buildings in the centres of thriving towns, vodka, strong cigarettes, broken-down cars (many of them “ancient” or “Soviet era”) – there’s no need to assemble all of that into sentences.
Unusually, I was in a group. When asked how I had slept in the draughty, etc etc etc hotel room I answered in accordance with the truth that I had slept very well. However, it turned out that some of the younger members of the party had not slept so well: their rooms were draughty, Soviet-era etc etc etc. Since I am engaged in Travel Writing I will pronounce the following: a new generation has grown up unaware of the hardships of communist Poland and are now voting for Donald Tusk with their I-pods while on the way to work in multinational PR agencies.
Later that day I ordered a soup called “Solianka.” There was a lemon in it. It’s perfectly normal.
Posted by hgrodsk at 07:04 AM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2007
Planes
From today's Irish Times:
European consumer affairs commissioner Maglena Kuneva will issue an ultimatum to Europe's biggest low-fares carrier and scores of other EU airlines tomorrow over the way they sell tickets online. She is expected to threaten to "name and shame" those airlines she believes are breaking European consumer laws and ask national regulators to take legal action unless they change their policies within four months.
I doubt naming and shaming will have any effect if scores of airlines are involved. Item: "Everyone is Lying to You." Weren't U2 onto that one ages ago?
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:14 PM | Comments (0)
November 12, 2007
Chavez Again
I'll never tire of this one. Here's Gazeta Wyborcza's page one headline from 10-11th of November:
"Hugo Chavez brata się z Kolumbijskimi terrorystami"
"Hugo Chavez fraternises with Columbian Terrorists"
Turning to the story within it emerges that Chavez is mediating between FARC and the Columbian government in the matter of prisoner exchange. Mediating, fraternising - what's the difference?
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)
You are Stupid. Obviously
Further, it is obvious that since form is a principle of choice [...], new forms will reveal new things in reality, new connections, and naturally, the more the internal coherence of these new forms is stressed in relation to others, the more rigorous they will be.Michel Butor, "The Novel as Research," translated by Gerald Fabian.
It's all quite natural, really.
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:26 PM | Comments (0)
November 06, 2007
Classy to the End and Beyond.
In yesterday’s entry I forgot to mention the huff that president Kaczyński disappeared into after Tusk’s victory. Apparently, before the wheels of government could be set again in motion, Tusk – like it or not, the people’s choice – had to apologise to the president for all the nasty things he said. Like for instance, referring to “the Kaczyński brothers.” But they are brothers… Yesterday was the first day of the new parliament and it too was marked by PiS’s petty spitefulness. Ziobro suggested that the proposed marshal of the Sejm had “questions to answer.” What those questions were, alas, we do not know, since no one in his party had the guts to ask them. The important thing was to smear the new guy and get a whispering campaign going good and early against him.
But all of that is behind us now as golden age of PO-PSL politics, flawless and incorrupt, with the interests only of the nation at heart, opens up before us. Since the subject of politics is therefore closed for the next four years or so I turn to Nabokov, a worthy adversary, but in this case an ally. He believes that before generalisation must come attention to detail.
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:52 PM | Comments (0)
November 05, 2007
Kaczyński Bows out with Class
No, not really. He is bitter to the end. He is claiming that a judge's decision to force a couple of PiS-sympathetic journalists to appear in court in a libel case is evidence that the new rulers of Poland are in cahoots with the judiciary to do down PiS. I know, I know it doesn't make sense. Meanwhile the soon-to-be-ex-minister for defence appears to believe that bad news from Iraq should be censored: he took Gazeta Wyborcza to task for reporting the death of a Polish soldier there before the man's family had been informed. The newspaper did not release the man's name, in case you were wondering. They merely reported what had happened. The same soon-to-be-ex-minister for defence is putting it about that the soon-to-be-future-minister for defence, Radosław Sikorski, is a traitor. Kaczyński claims Sikorski is anti-American - apparently because he had the cheek to actually try to negotiate favourable terms about the missile defence system that America - sorry, Poland, wants to build here. Remember: it was Kaczyński that made Sikorski minister for defence in the not too distant past.
And among Ziobro's last acts was the appointment of his secret police henchman to a nice feathered nest in the state prosecution service.
Posted by hgrodsk at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)