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float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-U73L7lMirsk\/Vywp3Aym-lI\/AAAAAAAABKA\/f3k7hKFsXZg0aGBjKY4Ez4FNIksmPlvTgCLcB\/s1600\/Daniel%2BMendelsohn.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg border=\"0\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-U73L7lMirsk\/Vywp3Aym-lI\/AAAAAAAABKA\/f3k7hKFsXZg0aGBjKY4Ez4FNIksmPlvTgCLcB\/s200\/Daniel%2BMendelsohn.jpg\" width=\"168\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/imalqata.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/02\/mccm-bronze-cat.jpg?w=241\u0026amp;h=300\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg alt=\"Egyptian cat sarcophagus \" border=\"0\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/imalqata.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/02\/mccm-bronze-cat.jpg?w=241\u0026amp;h=300\" title=\"Egyptian cat sarcophagus\" width=\"160\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHe had seemed grey-eyed, seated on the low dais of the slightly drab, multifunctional room where his two earlier sessions were held, but under the lights of the ASB Theatre Daniel Mendelsohn's eyes glittered bright blue. They called to mind those ancient Egyptian cat sculptures whose eye sockets, archaeologists tell us, were filled with blue glass. I remembered that his publicity photo had something else suggestive of those four-legged sacred beings: that raised eyebrow look which Dante called \u003Ci\u003Ealtero\u003C\/i\u003E.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHow to translate \u003Ci\u003Ealtero\u003C\/i\u003E, derived from the past participle of the Latin verb \u003Ci\u003Ealere\u003C\/i\u003E, to grow, as in, a person who stands above the rest? Funnily, considering that I used to be a translator and I'm describing someone who spent 12 years translating the works of the Alexandrian Greek poet Cavafy into English, an exact translation escapes me. Suggestion after suggestion from online dictionaries and translator forums seem to only point up what it is not: it is not 'superior', even less so 'arrogant', and not at all 'vainglorious', a word I have never used in speech (has anyone in the last 50 years?), but which I was amused to see matched to the Italian \u003Ci\u003Eborioso\u003C\/i\u003E, a new word for me, from the Latin \u003Ci\u003Eborea\u003C\/i\u003E, meaning 'wind'. As in, perhaps, 'puffed up'? Definitely not.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EPerhaps the closest word was \"lordly\". In fact, what the photo had prompted me to wonder -- just a bit -- was if Daniel Mendelsohn, whose writings I so admire, might not let me down in person by turning out to be someone who would lord his superior talent and taste over us.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWith every appearance he made, the worry receded, until it was laid definitely to rest at this third session, in which he appeared as an \"irresistible critic\". He was... irresistible, with his takeaway flat white, reading glasses, and mix of impudent throwaway lines and candid, intelligent reflections.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIan Wedde, who gets top marks as an interviewer, started off by asking about the critical mentality, or the critical sensibility. Mendelsohn's take on it involved what he called the \"vivacity\" of the argument, or dialogue, as a way of being social, as a way of living.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWedde brought up Mendelsohn's descriptions of his grandfather's talent for storytelling, which we had heard him extol affectionately in his previous session, in relation to his memoir \u003Ci\u003EThe lost: a search for six of six million. \u003C\/i\u003EWas that a formative influence?\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt was. \"The allure for me is storytelling. I think that as a critic, as well as a memoirist, the activity I'm engaged in is to narrate something. You narrate the path by which you arrived at the opinion of the work that you now have\".\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe word \"critic\", he told us, comes from the Greek \u003Ci\u003Ekrinein,\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003Eto make a judgement. And, \"We come from a society that increasingly doesn't want to. People say, 'Who am I to judge?'. \u0026nbsp;Well, you have a brain -- \u003Ci\u003Eyou \u003C\/i\u003Eare!\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe importance of using your brain led to considerations about his formation as a scholar of the classics, beginning with the study of the Greek and Latin languages. \"Greek and Latin: the rigour of the grammar enforces a rigour of thought. I don't know why that had such appeal to me, but as a kid I was already trying to learn Greek.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe study of classics turned out to be a useful formation in many other ways as well.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"As a classicist you have to process an immense amount of material.\" He gave us a glorious vignette from his University years, in which he was in the office of his classicist mentor. \"She took a drag on her cigarette and said to me, 'Of course you can't write anything until you've read everything'.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhat she was describing, he said, was the \"scholarly duty to a body of knowledge\". In some ways, the same concept applies to criticism. \"I have a wonderful editor who says criticism is a service industry. You don't have time to read everything. I do. That's my job.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe job does not include telling you what you should think or do. \"Of course, I want my audience to be with me, but I don't \u003Ci\u003Ecare \u003C\/i\u003Eif you read the book or see the movie.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt played as impertinent, but at heart it's a serious creed which Mendelsohn shares with the critics he grew up reading in the pages of The New Yorker, about whom he explained, \"By dramatising the process by which they arrived at their judgement, the critics implied that you also could form your own opinion\".\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt was a point he had made in\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/books\/page-turner\/a-critics-manifesto\"\u003E\"A Critic's Manifesto\"\u003C\/a\u003E, a piece\u0026nbsp;which appeared in The New Yorker's Page-Turner blog a few years ago, a thoughtful and, if it's not too strong a term, enthusiastic exploration of the role of the professional critic in our society (and of Mendelsohn's own development as a critic), which should be read by anyone interested in the topic, but above all by anyone who, like Dave Eggers, thinks that only a person who has written a book, or made a movie, has the right to dismiss a book, or a movie.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMendelsohn quoted for us what might be considered the manifesto of the Manifesto: \"Knowledge plus taste equals meaningful judgement. The key word is meaningful\".\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWedde brought up the subject of highbrow vs lowbrow. Mendelsohn responded by declaring a taste for Noel Coward, and \"I'm not interested in a high-low separation. It can sound funny coming from a classicist, but you know \u003Ci\u003Eeveryone \u003C\/i\u003Ewent to see Greek Drama\".\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOur culture isolates the categories, he said, but he doesn't. \"In my own enjoyment of things I don't think I'm a snooty person -- you know I watch 'Revenge'. I watch 'Scandal'. I have no patience for people who say 'I don't watch TV'. I mean, this is your culture. As an intellectual you have to inhabit your culture.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"If you're doing \u003Ci\u003Eanything \u003C\/i\u003Eseriously, that's your invitation to me. If you take it seriously, I'll do it seriously.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHe went on to express the opinion -- which had me, for one, exulting -- that one of the most non-serious pursuits of our society is the ranking of books and movies, for which we have Amazon to thank. \"The idea that it is a useful criterion -- it was a 5 star book -- is completely idiotic to me.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAfter all, \"Everything interesting is \u003Ci\u003Emixed\".\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ETo finish off, he read us an excerpt from his upcoming book. It was about how after his father retired from his job as a scientist, he asked Daniel if he could sit in on the class he was teaching at Bard University on \u003Ci\u003EThe Odyssey. \u003C\/i\u003EPartly, we are given to understand, it was because he was curious about the poem itself, which had never really appealed to him, his preference being for \u003Ci\u003EThe Iliad.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003EBut even more, it was about getting to know his son better, to experience this thing which was such a chunk of his life.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EEvery day he would appear, it was the winter semester, snowy weather in upstate New York, they'd meet in the car park and walk to the classroom together, his father, already quite old, in his eighties I think, always careful how he stepped, because he was afraid of falling.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAnd then after the class ends Daniel sees an ad for an Odyssey cruise which retraces Odysseus's route home, and he and his father go on it together. Numerous adventures rise up before them, just like in the Cavafy poem, and in the end, again like the Cavafy poem, they never do get to Ithaca, the canal of Corinth closed by a strike, and ... and then, they come home, and soon after that, \"My father fell.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHe stopped reading there, but you knew what that was leading to, because he had said his father is no longer alive.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt was maybe the best reading I'd ever heard at a literary festival. Mendelsohn read beautifully, his measured cadence perfectly matching the long and lyrical sentences, which managed however to be as simply and clearly written as Hemingway could ever have wished. Write the truest sentence you know.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003EAlthough I never did come up with a word for \u003Ci\u003Ealtero, \u003C\/i\u003EI did find a definition by\u0026nbsp;Armando Testi which could have described Mendelsohn reading the words he had clearly worked and re-worked so that they would say exactly what they needed to say, \"A pride which is always unruffled, which we may perceive as majesty.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAs I waited in the signing line, I couldn't help accosting the woman next to me to enthuse about the reading. She said, \"I loved the story but I'm really not sure about having yet another term for dying -- I already didn't like \u003Ci\u003Epassing \u003C\/i\u003Eand now we've got \u003Ci\u003Efalling\u003C\/i\u003E\".\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EI said, \"I think (you know how you're so polite, but inside I was sure she was completely off course, to use an odyssean metaphor) that he really was talking about falling. Remember at the beginning he said his father was always afraid of falling? I think that was meant as a premonition of what would happen at the end. Then of course with old people, whether 'falling' means falling on an icy path and breaking a femur, or falling to the floor from a heart attack, we can imagine that it will lead to death. But I'm sure falling meant falling!\" She said, \"Oh, I hadn't thought of that, maybe you're right!\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELooking back, however, I think she could have been right. I think that if anyone could pull it off, Daniel Mendelsohn, classics scholar and believer in the endless possibilities of human expression, could have created a new metaphor for death, born from the language of myth. \"He fell.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: x-small;\"\u003EThanks to the \u003Ca href=\"https:\/\/imalqata.wordpress.com\/2012\/02\/20\/dig-cat\/\"\u003EiMalqata \u003C\/a\u003Eblog for the image of the Egyptian bronze cat. Now in the Michael C. Carlos Museum, it would have been \u0026nbsp;part of a cat sarcophagus, and was once\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: x-small;\"\u003Egiven as a gift by Charlie Chaplin to his wife, \u0026nbsp;Paulette Goddard.\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: x-small;\"\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Cspan style=\"font-size: x-small;\"\u003E--\u003C\/span\u003E\u003Ci\u003EKaren\u003C\/i\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/feeds\/8541396008102489011\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/2015\/06\/daniel-mendelsohn-was-irresistible.html#comment-form","title":"0 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/2501884760724421053\/posts\/default\/8541396008102489011"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/2501884760724421053\/posts\/default\/8541396008102489011"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/2015\/06\/daniel-mendelsohn-was-irresistible.html","title":"Daniel Mendelsohn was \"An irresistible critic\" at AWF15"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Karen Craig"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/18310967522076681423"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"23","height":"32","src":"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-WaLn2rFYxqE\/UNvHlimMvBI\/AAAAAAAAABY\/ceYnAw1lZEk\/s220\/The%2BLibrarian.jpg"}}],"media$thumbnail":{"xmlns$media":"http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/","url":"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-U73L7lMirsk\/Vywp3Aym-lI\/AAAAAAAABKA\/f3k7hKFsXZg0aGBjKY4Ez4FNIksmPlvTgCLcB\/s72-c\/Daniel%2BMendelsohn.jpg","height":"72","width":"72"},"thr$total":{"$t":"0"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501884760724421053.post-5179516217162475222"},"published":{"$t":"2015-06-08T15:54:00.000+12:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2016-03-29T14:39:47.987+13:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Auckland Writers Festival"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"AWF"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"awf15"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Daniel Mendelsohn"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Helena Wisniewska Brow"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Karen"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"Helena Wisniewska Brow and Daniel Mendelsohn in \"Family Matters\" at AWF15"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Cimg src=\"http:\/\/writersfestival.co.nz\/assets\/uploads\/2015\/03\/EVENT38AWF.jpg\" height=\"213\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cb\u003E\"Stories, stories. There isn't enough paper in the world to tell our stories.\"\u003C\/b\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThis was a sober session. How could it be otherwise? Two authors who followed the threads of family stories through time and history to places rent by sorrow and loss, violence and evil. Daniel Mendelsohn had replaced the scarf he'd worn to talk about the art of translating poetry the day before with a necktie. Maybe a coincidence, but it seemed right, as he evoked members of his family who were denied a funeral, a grave, even; but for whom he was able to create a place of remembrance, 500 pages long.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHis book\u0026nbsp;\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/discover.elgar.govt.nz\/iii\/encore\/search\/C__SThe%20lost%20%3A%20a%20search%20for%20six%20of%20six%20million%20Lw%3D%3D%20Daniel%20Mendelsohn%20SMCLN%20photographs%20by%20Matt%20Mendelsohn.__Orightresult__U?lang=eng\u0026amp;suite=def\"\u003EThe Lost: a Search for Six of the Six Million\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/i\u003Erelates his\u0026nbsp;quest to find out what had happened to his grandfather's brother, who made the decision to stay in Galicia (then Poland, now Ukraine) when the rest of the family emigrated to the United States in the early years of the 20th century, and who, along with his wife and their four daughters, disappeared in the Holocaust.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHelena Wisniewska Brow is a kiwi, whose book\u0026nbsp;\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/discover.elgar.govt.nz\/iii\/encore\/record\/C__Rb2940713__S%09%20Give%20us%20this%20day%20%3A%20a%20memoir%20of%20family%20and%20exile%20Lw%3D%3D%20Helena%20Wi%C5%9Bniewska%20Brow.__Orightresult__U__X4?lang=eng\u0026amp;suite=def\"\u003EGive Us This Day: A Memoir of Family and Exile \u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/i\u003Eis about her exploration of the stories she heard from her Polish father while growing up. He was 10 when the USSR invaded Poland. Two years later, he, his mother, and his brother and sisters were deported by the Russians to Siberia, and from there shipped to an internment camp in Iran, where his mother died. The children became part of the group of Polish evacuees who had been offered refuge in New Zealand.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn both cases, the seeds were sown early. The black moods which would overcome Wisniewska Brow's father on Christmas Day, or his obsession with not wasting food. Mendelsohn started his story, as indeed he starts his book, with an early memory which he phrases, touchingly, as he would have perceived it as a child; \"I'd walk into a room and people would start to cry\".\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIt was, as we have instinctively understood, because of how he resembled the brother who had stayed behind, reminding the gathered family of their lost ones, who in some way were doubly lost, for no one knew how their story had ended.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"At a certain point in my life around when I turned 40, I was suddenly possessed of an idea, to know exactly what had happened to them.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"No one is a statistic. Specific things are done to people by specific people. It becomes a sort of ethical duty to get them out [of the statistics], to restore to these people their own specificity.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHe decided to look for these \"six needles in a giant haystack\", and eventually tracked down 12 survivors of the population of this little Polish town, scattered among three continents. It took three years. \"Each one had a piece of the puzzle.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EPeter Wells, chairing the session, asked about how they had gotten to the point where they wanted to ask about the past. They both came back to the stories, the stories of a past they hadn't been a part of, but were somehow being made a part of.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMendelsohn's take, like all his takes, was clearly thought out. \"You have to get to a point where the past becomes more important, and the mysteries are less able to be dismissed. You have to have developed the imagination.\" His had been fertilised by his grandfather, who couldn't go to the corner store for milk without coming back with a couple of new stories as well. \"I was lucky to grow up in the presence of a great storyteller.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOn his book tour, he said, someone told him \"I think your grandfather knew you were listening and had decided you were the one to tell the stories\".\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"In every family there's someone who loves listening to the old people\", he says. \"I was that kid.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EOne of the thing that Wisniewska Brow found most compelling about her father's stories was how they were not linear. \"They are like Russian dolls or Chinese boxes.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EMendelsohn added, \"You think of history that it starts at A and ends at B, but actually there is no end. Every story goes on.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"I'll never forget. A survivor in Sydney told me in the course of a difficult interview, 'Stories, stories. There isn't enough paper in the world to tell our stories.'\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"Man plans and God laughs\", his grandmother used to say.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EStill they persisted. If Mendelsohn had likened his search to solving a puzzle, Wisniewska Brow used another metaphor for piecing together and joining up. \"Writing the book was like building with a giant lego set, \" she said. \"All these bits of information. I put them all together, and shuffled them around a bit at the end.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAt the end, the two authors were asked by a member of the audience if they could describe the places of their family origins. Mendelsohn called the population of that part of Europe the first multiculturalists. His grandfather spoke seven languages.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"For my father it was Paradise, and now it's gone,\" concluded Wisniewska Brow.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EA sober event, as I said. But not comfortless. Even if only as slightly as an hour can allow, the encounter with these two writers, their dedication and their empathy, was \u0026nbsp;-- there's no other word for it -- uplifting.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EDaniel Mendelsohn told a wonderful story. He was interviewing a Polish woman, one of the survivors, in her home in Israel. Describing a certain dish to him, she stopped and said, \"I'll make it for you\".\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\"So I waited 1 1\/2 hours for her to make this dish. It was so important to her. She said 'I want you to know what this tastes like, because no one will ever cook this kind of food after I'm dead'.\"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EHe didn't tell us what it tasted like, and despite the widespread cynicism audience Q and A seems to inspire these days, let me tell you that no one was silly enough to ask.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E-- \u003Ci\u003EKaren\u003C\/i\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/feeds\/5179516217162475222\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/2015\/06\/helena-wisniewska-brow-and-daniel.html#comment-form","title":"0 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/2501884760724421053\/posts\/default\/5179516217162475222"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/2501884760724421053\/posts\/default\/5179516217162475222"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/2015\/06\/helena-wisniewska-brow-and-daniel.html","title":"Helena Wisniewska Brow and Daniel Mendelsohn in \"Family Matters\" at AWF15"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Karen Craig"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/18310967522076681423"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"23","height":"32","src":"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-WaLn2rFYxqE\/UNvHlimMvBI\/AAAAAAAAABY\/ceYnAw1lZEk\/s220\/The%2BLibrarian.jpg"}}],"thr$total":{"$t":"0"}},{"id":{"$t":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501884760724421053.post-1188345090089707780"},"published":{"$t":"2015-05-28T17:42:00.001+12:00"},"updated":{"$t":"2016-03-29T16:00:03.622+13:00"},"category":[{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Anna Jackson"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Auckland Writers Festival"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"AWF"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"awf15"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Daniel Mendelsohn"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"poetry"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"Simon"},{"scheme":"http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#","term":"translation"}],"title":{"type":"text","$t":"\"Translation Gymnastics\" at AWF15, with Anna Jackson and Daniel Mendelsohn"},"content":{"type":"html","$t":"\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv style=\"clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Cimg src=\"http:\/\/writersfestival.co.nz\/assets\/uploads\/2015\/03\/EVENT19AWF.jpg\" height=\"212\" width=\"320\" \/\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003EThanks to Simon Comber from Readers Services for this guest post.\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ETom Bishop facilitated an engaging discussion between American writer and critic Daniel Mendelsohn and New Zealand poet Anna Jackson. Together the speakers explored the different ways a writer could interact with a bygone poetic voice.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAs it turned out, only Mendelsohn was an actual translator of poetry, having spent twelve years working on his acclaimed translations of the poems of C.P Cavafy (\u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/discover.elgar.govt.nz\/iii\/encore\/record\/C__Rb2163853__SCollected%20poems%20Lw%3D%3D%20C.P.%20Cavafy%20__Orightresult__X1?lang=eng\u0026amp;suite=def\"\u003ECollected poems\u003C\/a\u003E)\u003C\/i\u003E. The first section of Jackson’s recent volume of poetry, \u003Ci\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/discover.elgar.govt.nz\/iii\/encore\/search\/C__SI%2C%20Clodia%2C%20and%20other%20portraits%20Lw%3D%3D%20Anna%20Jackson.__Orightresult__U?lang=eng\u0026amp;suite=def\"\u003EI, Clodia and other portraits\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E, had been named after (and written in the imagined voice of), the love interest of the famous Roman poet of antiquity Catullus. Whilst Mendelsohn was deeply familiar with Cavafy in the original Greek, Jackson was only familiar with Catullus in translation. She spoke of her initial exposure through Ben Jonson’s Renaissance era translations, and C.K Stead’s resetting of Catullus poems to Auckland’s West Coast beaches.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EAs the discussion made clear, there were still many similarities to be found between the two guests and their respective relationships to poetry of the past. Mendelsohn noted that when in the midst of working on translations, you were both responding to and engaging with the poetic voice. There was an aspect of being “reactive” to both the original text and previous translations. Aspects of this, and of the wonderful word Mendelsohn liked to use to describe his role, “adaptrix”, could just as easily have been applied to Jackson’s relationship to Catullus.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIn the midst of their research, both writers couldn’t help but be laying a palimpsest over what other translators were gesturing towards, although, inevitably, only Mendelsohn would ever find himself making alterations between the release of the hard and softcover versions of his translations. Jackson on the other hand liked to joke that, as more of an imaginative adaptor than a translator, her “translation” would always be the most perfect. \u003Ci\u003EI, Clodia\u003C\/i\u003E simultaneously spoke back to and used the voice of Catullus.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EPerhaps the Homeric image Mendelsohn fondly recalled from the tales of Odysseus sums up the activity that both writers were trying to articulate during this discussion. When Odysseus ventures to the Underworld he recognises his mother and repeatedly tries to hug her, but as she is only a shade, his arms find no solid body to wrap around. Mendelsohn was implying that both his and Jackson’s work was mirrored in this scene. Both Catullus and Cavafy are gone from the world, but through the work of the “adaptrix”, their spirits, and their voices, remain.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E--\u003Ci\u003ESimon\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ci\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/i\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"\u003E\u003Ca href=\"http:\/\/writersfestival.co.nz\/assets\/themes\/writersfestival\/images\/logo.svg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;\"\u003E\u003Cimg alt=\"Auckland Writers Festival\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/writersfestival.co.nz\/assets\/themes\/writersfestival\/images\/logo.svg\" height=\"200\" width=\"200\" \/\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E"},"link":[{"rel":"replies","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/feeds\/1188345090089707780\/comments\/default","title":"Post Comments"},{"rel":"replies","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/2015\/05\/translation-gymnastics-at-awf15-with.html#comment-form","title":"1 Comments"},{"rel":"edit","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/2501884760724421053\/posts\/default\/1188345090089707780"},{"rel":"self","type":"application/atom+xml","href":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/feeds\/2501884760724421053\/posts\/default\/1188345090089707780"},{"rel":"alternate","type":"text/html","href":"http:\/\/albooksinthecity.blogspot.com\/2015\/05\/translation-gymnastics-at-awf15-with.html","title":"\"Translation Gymnastics\" at AWF15, with Anna Jackson and Daniel Mendelsohn"}],"author":[{"name":{"$t":"Karen Craig"},"uri":{"$t":"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/18310967522076681423"},"email":{"$t":"noreply@blogger.com"},"gd$image":{"rel":"http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail","width":"23","height":"32","src":"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-WaLn2rFYxqE\/UNvHlimMvBI\/AAAAAAAAABY\/ceYnAw1lZEk\/s220\/The%2BLibrarian.jpg"}}],"thr$total":{"$t":"1"}}]}});