Translating Borges

It has often been said that Borges's fictions have never been translated into English well. I certainly thought Andrew Hurley's attempts are ordinary, and I'd like to think my translation of Borges Y Yo is better, but this ridiculously good anecdote found in a review of Borges's Collected Fictions tops the lot:

On what was to be our last night in Paris, Borges told me that, a few days earlier, he had attended a staging of Macbeth and that, in spite of the terrible performance, he had left the theatre 'shattered by tragic passion'. 'How curious,' he said, 'that Shakespeare's genius can even overcome the efforts of a bad actor.' Borges's genius will overcome Hurley's version, as it has so many others, and English-speaking readers, while waiting for the inspired translator of Borges, may have to resign themselves to the not impossible task of learning Spanish.

The Dalai Lama as Jedi Knight

Am I the only one to think that the Dalai Lama seems to resemble Yoda with his playfulness, ungrammatical yet charming and understandable English, opposition to authoritarian systems and deep spirituality?

Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield's Breasts

Even Sophia Loren couldn't keep her eyes off Jayne Mansfield's breasts:

Capote's Blondes and Brunettes

Although I hadn't actually seen the film, the impression I got from all the talk about Katherine Hepburn's star turn in Breakfast at Tiffany's was that it was superficial socialite twaddle and Capote's writing wasn't worth bothering with.

But if it weren't for the film Capote, which I did go and see, I wouldn't have reassessed my impression of the film's inspiration and gotten down to reading his work.

Needless to say, In Cold Blood and the dead-tree version of Breakfast at Tiffany's are brilliant, and Holly Golightly is a much darker figure than I had expected.

And so I give you a selection from In Cold Blood, which, funnily enough given the book's non-fictional fictional status, might not be words of Capote's invention but of the actual person from whose mouth they were supposedly uttered:

"What you got against him - a nice little punk like that?"

"Parole violation."

"Uh-huh. Came all the way from Kansas on a parole case. Well, I'm just a dizzy blonde. I believe you. But I wouldn't tell that tale to any brunettes."

Cryptic Joy

I'm a fan of cryptic crosswords, and yesterday's Age had a fantastically good clue for 1 across:

Give a shellacking with two languages (6,6)

It took a while, and I needed a little help with some handily placed cross clues, but figuring out French polish was the answer made the morning feel so much brighter.

Sympathetic Until...

I certainly felt quite sympathetic towards the first person ever convicted of distributing movies over the internet using BitTorrent, which happened in Hong Kong of all places. Yes, sympathetic until I noticed he had been convicted for distributing the films Daredevil, Miss Congeniality and Red Planet, the first of which mine own eyes can attest was craptacular.

Schopenhauer vs. the German Idealists

Schopenhauer dealt professionally with Hegel at least in the German university system, but that didn't stop him in his World as Will and Representation from launching some of the most stinging invective I've ever read against the obscurantism of the German Idealists that came after Kant:

What was senseless and without meaning at once took refuge in obscure exposition and language. Fichte was the first to grasp and make use of this privilege; Schelling at best equalled him in this, and a host of hungry scribblers without intellect or honesty soon surpassed them both. But the greatest effrontery in serving up sheer nonsense, in scrabbling together senseless and maddening webs of words, such as had previously been heard only in madhouses, finally appeared in Hegel.