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2004-03-12 postsamwidge (utc)
�1. Ask not for whom
"What struck me the most", the Swiss Tribune De Geneve quotes a
tearful nurse as saying, "were the mobile phones of the dead, which
never stopped ringing."
�2. Denis, Denis
Bursting
off the blocks is our favourite Minister for Yoorp. He is, you may be
surprised to learn, against the terrorisme. (Did you also used to
play a primitive form of buzzword bingo as a child gr�-ing up in a UK
when the IRA was at the peak of its powers? They blew up a barracks
that my school bus went past, once. Back then blowing persons up was
pretty much always "despicable" and "cowardly", and of course it still
is. What I understand no better now than I did then, which was not
well, is why so much meeja bandwidth was devoted to persons stating
this, when it was both obvious in itself and a thing which they
took to be obvious. For the record, though, the Madrid bombings were
indeed cowardly and utterly despicable.)
But also:
On the train from Berne to Geneva I read a new book by one of the
editors of the main Swiss French newspaper, Le Temps. Joelle Kuntz's
essays on the role of frontiers in the modern world, both inside and
between nations, take me into new thinking about how Europe needs to
redefine itself. I hope an English publisher is found soon. If I have
time, I try and drop into a bookshop in any European city I am
visiting. Even when I don't know the language, it is fascinating to
see what books are being sold and what is being translated from
English. Harry Potter and Michael Moore are everywhere. But we do not
seem to repay the compliment. It would be good to start with Joelle
Kuntz's book.
I can just see that going down a storm - "The Future of Yoorp", by
Kuntz. He's in a world of his own, McShane, isn't it?
(I can't find it on Amazon.Frenchy-French or .Tsky-Tsk, anyway.)
�3. Gravy!
My fine-tuned gravy-dowsing apparatus went beserk over
this, from the late Joan Tate, translateuse extraordinaire:
The Scandinavians have long realized that as well-educated, highly
literate and internationally-minded people, they have to promote their
own literature abroad. All Scandinavian countries have
government-funded agencies for this purpose. Sometimes they are
independent bodies. Sometimes they are attached to the arts or culture
departments of their governments, sometimes to the Foreign Office or
the Education Department. Such agencies form a useful link with those
in other countries who can read Scandinavian languages. Sweden was the
first to institute this kind of link. There are only eight million
people in that huge country. Go into any bookshop of any size in
Stockholm (or in Helsinki) and you will find an impressive array of
books in English. The opposite is not true. One or two London
bookshops sell Scandinavian books. The only alternative source is to
buy books directly from Sweden, paying the high rate of VAT and bank
charges often as much as the price of the book.
(The squeamish may prefer to be forewarned that she also indulges in
some typical translatorese: "I believe in magic, by which I mean that
some things which are perfectly explicable can be magical. But to
explain them takes away the magic. The way the human mind works is
magic. The most diligent of medical scientists still know very little
about how the mind works, though they know quite a lot about why it
sometimes doesn't work." Most of it is very good, though.)
[via Language
Hat]
�4. (Some of) the competition
Norvik Press is a
publishing house based at the University of East Anglia, Norwich,
England, specializing in Scandinavian literature.
Of their fiction
("literature") catalogue they say:
The range includes both classic works of Scandinavian literature since
the early eighteenth century and contemporary works of high literary
merit. The chief emphasis is on narrative fiction; but drama and
poetry are also represented.
Nothing says "Tastes Nasty" to the sophisticated consumeur of today
quite like a sprinkling of poetry in the catalogue, isn't it?
[Permalink]
2004-03-12 morning (utc)
You can't judge an apple by looking at a tree
You can't judge honey by looking at the bee
You can't judge a daughter by looking at the mother
You can't judge a book by looking at the cover
Oh can't you see, oh you misjudge me
I look like a farmer, but I'm a lover
You can't judge a book by looking at the cover
You Can't Judge A Book By It's Cover, Willie Dixon
(performed by Bo Diddley)
But
trashy old covers for books that are now invariably qualitied can
be fun. What went wrong? From an old post
by Chris Timber I have hijacked a quote from
Ken Worpole's
Reading by Numbers: Contemporary Publishing and Popular Fiction
(Comedia, 1984):
The "trade paperback" is a larger format, more expensively produced
paperback designed exclusively for bookshop sales, and carries an aura
of a higher "seriousness" than the cheap, easy-to-
fit-in-your-pocket book. Many publishers moved their more "serious"
writers over into their new "trade" paperback lists or re-printed
books with new "classical" covers ... This not only raised the price
of the books but literally took them out of the supermarkets and the
chain-stores. The "trade" paperback was designed specifically to be
sold by the book trade. Much writing was thus taken out of the arena
of popular literature, as can be gauged by thumbing through the
paperback sections in second-hand bookshops, where it is not unusual
to find Sartre, Trocchi, Lawrence, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Richard
Wright, Nell Dunn, Mary McCarthy, Cesare Pavese, Ignazio Silone,
Norman Mailer and many others being promoted as sensational fiction
with garish covers - and being sold in their tens of thousands rather
than thousands. It is the development of the trade paperback which
further separated out "serious" literature from "popular"
literature and created a vacuum in the cheap paperback field which
formula writing rushed to fill. (pp. 7-8)
It was the publishers, then, what done it. There have been kerfuffles
in the UKish media about the possibility of scapping recommended
retail prices for books here, and one of the arguments (the bad one)
is that it will encourage supermarkets to stack 'em high and sell 'em
cheap, but only trash need apply. It's a bad argument partly because
supermarkets already do exactly that but also because it
implicitly assumes that only crap can be sold, and that which can be
sold is necessarily crap.
And
another thing:
There is a self-fulfilling fallacy in the Anglo publishing world that
their readers (all X million of them) are not interested in works in
translation.
This fallacy serves as the justification for leading publishers to
offer a dwindling selection of contemporary foreign works (less than
5% of fiction published in English are from other tongues). And even
then they often go out of their way to disguise that the book is a
translation by relegating the mention "translated by" to the title
page or even tucked into the colophon.
Publishers, eh? I'm unequal to the challenge of believing that if
they just upped 5% to 10% the Foreign would just fly off the shelves,
and also to the suggestion that they're deliberately picking
unsellable losers out of spite. On the other hand, it doesn't seem
nearly as unlikely that Foreign stuff could be sold and publishers are
just bad at it, though. But I don't want so much want them to mend
their ways as I just want to dip my dry dry bread in their left-over
gravy.
If Foreign literature is really any cop at all, and I see no reason to
think it isn't, and if nobody is selling it in the Engleesh, then one
would think it would be possible to assemble a Real Madrid
catalogue at Accrington Stanley prices, and that's not a
situation to bemoan so much as one deeply in need of exploiting.
In any case, a lot of the recent action in the UK literature market
has been smaller, nimbler, newer companies having surprise hit after
surprise hit, and very well done to them for that. In particular, a
big shout out to Canongate, the
fiercely independent Edinburgh lot who have brought out a new
translation of Hamsun's
Hunger.
There must be shed loads of top-quality 20th century Yoorpean
literature languishing in the wilderness for lack of entrepeneurs, and
when the occasional Nobeliste is translated it's almost always
straight out of the Tastes Nasty, But Good For You school. (And don't
get me started on University Presses. If a novel comes out in
translation from a UP it might as well have a sticker on it saying
"Nobody's ever going to read this except the translator's students,
but that's OK 'cos we didn't actually have to pay them anything so
it's all gravy to us" and have done with it.)
If you've been joining the dots you'll already know by now exactly
what I have in mind: find some neglected Yoorpean gems, pick up the
Engleesh rights for a song, and stick them out in consumer-friendly
packaging - it should be possible to wedge a paperbock into the
backpocket of a pair of jeans, and they should be cheap enough that
you don't care if they take a bruising on the way, as the French have
understood all along. 7 quid tops, and less is better. (The crappy
old 80's Moorcock, Ballard and W S Burroughs paperbacks from Granada's
magnificent Panther line have lasted long enough for me to own them
second or third hand, so don't be giving me any of that quality
fandango.)
But first things should, in time honoured fashion, come first, and the
first thing is to scope up some talent. Bengt indirectly put me on
the scent of Nobeliste Eyvind Johnson:
His early novels, in which the influence of Proust, Gide, and Joyce
can be discerned, are mainly concerned with man's frustration. In
Bobinack (1932), an expos� of the machinations of modern capitalism,
Regn i gryningen (1933; "Rain at Daybreak"), an attack on modern
office drudgery and its effects [...]
The one that's barely and begrudgingly on the borders of in-print in
the Engleesh is Dreams of
Roses and Fire, but selling disaffected Art School Marxistes a
searing critique of the banal drudgery of capitaliste domestication
has got to be worth a few zlotys, isn't it? I mean, we're talking
about people who keep Kerouac's heirs in gravy, so it's not as
if they're especially fussy, so long as you press the right buttons.
Then you can stack 'em high and sell them cheap and if you don't tell
them it's good for them, how are they ever going to know it tastes
nasty? (The aura of "higher seriousness" goes up against the wall
first, you can bet.) That, Varied Reader, is a business
model. Anyone else want to play?
[Permalink]
2004-03-11 sn� (utc)
It's sn�ing again for sure. In March. In Bristol.
Whirled's gorn mad, innit?
(I hope they haven't had time to cancel Swedish class, yet.)
[Permalink]
2004-03-11 postsamwidge (utc)
There is no such Swedish word as
Nordostersj�kustartilleriflygspaningssimulatoranl�ggnings-
materielunderh�llsuppf�ljningssystemdiskussions-
inl�ggsf�rberedelsearbetan, of course, but it is cool that someone
made up a bogus Swedish monsterword - they're more usually Finnish.
[via PF]
(Don't persons perpetrate such nonsenses also in the Turkish, Peafster?)
[Permalink]
2004-03-11 samwidge (utc)
I'm actually quoting from the front page, but that won't keep, so
here's the full article
El �ltimo balance oficial ofrecido por la Comunidad de Madrid cifra en
173 los muertos y en casi 600 los heridos en los cuatro atentados
perpetrados esta ma�ana en la capital. A las 7.35 horas de la ma�ana,
cuatro bombas han estallado de forma casi simult�nea en las estaciones
ferroviarias de Atocha, Santa Eugenia y El Pozo.
Four bombs, 173 dead, 600 injured.
Atrocities are of course not objectively more atrocious when one of
the co-authors of the paper you are copy-editing has recently moved
back to Madrid, but details like that can have a powerful focussing
effect.
[UPDATE: My colleague is OK.]
[Permalink]
2004-03-11 kaffe (utc)
It's Higgs
and seek, the physicist's phavourite:
A scientist says one of the most sought after particles in physics -
the Higgs boson - may have been found, but the evidence is still
relatively weak.
Peter Renton, of the University of Oxford, says the particle may have
been detected by researchers at an atom-smashing facility in
Switzerland.
"An atom-smashing facility in Switzerland"?! CERN - for it is it! -
is "an atom-smashing facility in Switzerland" in much the same way
that Mount Everest is "a large rock in Nepal".
But there is a handy cut-out-and-keep guide to the particles of the
standard model, with the Higgs's square forlornly adjacent and
asterisked "yet to be confirmed".
[Permalink]
2004-03-11 morning (utc)
The inexorable dialectique of oppresseur and oppressee is of course robust
under a simple exchange of roles:
Russia is to raise concerns about the rights of hundreds of thousands
of Russian-speakers in Latvia and Estonia.
Russian officials will make their case at talks with the Organisation
for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
A foreign ministry spokesman said Latvia's plan for secondary
education to be conducted predominantly in Latvian required thorough
examination.
There is no reason whatever to think that Russia's motives are
honourable, even if their case happens to be - it is unlikely that
this move will do other than harden attitudes on all available sides.
This is language as cultural identity, remember
and by no means even mostly about what is taught in schools:
Latvia faces a looming political problem as one fifth of the country's
inhabitants are legally labelled 'non-citizens' and are not entitled
to vote in the European Parliament elections next year. [...]
This could become a problem when Latvia officially joins the EU, said
Alvaro Gil-Robles, Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe
during his visit to Riga on 8 October.
Oh, and one
I missed:
Turkish will be added to the list of EU official languages if an
agreement on the division of Cyprus is reached.
The Commission spokesperson for enlargement told EUobserver that if a
solution is found, Turkish will immediately become an EU official
language. "There will be no need of formal proposals. It will be
automatic", he said.
[Permalink]
2004-03-10 late samwidge (utc)
I am reading a very long manuscript of which I seem to have acquired
co-authorship in absentia.
This is keeping me very quiet, as it is very absorbing and, as I
mentioned, long. It's probably the best technical work I've written,
although I like to think that that isn't entirely because I didn't.
[Permalink]
2004-03-10 samwidge (utc)
SUPERIMPOSED CAPTION: 'ALL FACTS VERIFIED BY THE RHODESIAN POLICE'
Braddon: Tonight's show comes live from the tiny village of Rabid in
Buckinghamshire, and our first question tonight is from a Mrs
Elizabeth Scrint who says she is going on a Mediterranean cruise next
week and can't find anything wrong with the Syrians. Well, Mrs Scrint,
apart from being totally unprincipled left-wing troublemakers, the
Syrians are also born skivers, they're dirty, smelly and
untrustworthy, and, of course, they're friends of the awful
gippos. (applause) There you are, Mrs Scrint, I hope that answers some
of your problems - have a nice trip
With the Yoorp of 25, the problematique of the national characters is
in danger of getting entirely out of hand. Too often the genius of a
folk is mischaracterised by those with only a superficial acquaintance
or, worse yet, by those actively engaged in mischief-making. At this
'bladet, we deplore such abuses of a technique which can, in the hands
of a skilled and conscienscious user, be a valuable guideline to the
foibles and quirks but also the very real virtues and strengths of our
foreign friends and increasingly partners.
Accordingly, despite its preliminary stage of development, we are
proud to unveil our contribution to international understanding: the
National Characteriser. Simply choose one of each of options to learn
Valuable Truths about some of our new, and not so new, co-Yoorpeans.
Any passing gentlepersons of gender or otherwise affiliated with
prominent gravy-dispensing organisations are invited to consider how
much more useful this would be if the means were made available to
cover all 25 countries and enhance the level of detail for each...
[Permalink]
2004-03-10 morning (utc)
�0. National character, as seen from Cosmopolitania
"Like all Austrians, he was an incorrigible hoarder of cardboard and
smelled faintly of goats."
�1. Is that a brick you're chewing, Jacques, or are you just
talking ze Engleesh?
Oh, and I'm sure you'll agree, l� l�:
The report - which ranks 12,000 children aged 15-16 from Denmark, the
Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Sweden, France and Spain - shows that
Swedes and Finns are outperforming their European rivals.
But there is a very poor report for French pupils, whose level of
English has dropped since 1996, both in writing the language and
understanding it.
In 1996, France was still ahead of Spain, but has now slipped down to
bottom of the class and its pupils are "clearly inferior to thoses in
the other six countries", according to the report.
There's a longer,
somewhat
Frencher account available, too:
L'�tude prend en compte les �l�ves allemands du m�me �ge, mais ils
n'ont pas �t� inclus dans la comparaison globale "pour des raisons de
comparabilit�" a pr�cis� le minist�re fran�ais. Par ailleurs, les
autres pays de l'UE n'ont pas particip� � l'�tude. Les �preuves ne
portaient pas sur l'expression orale des �l�ves.
The study also included German pupils of the same age, but they
weren't included in the overall comparison "for reasons of
comparability", the French minister explained. The other EU countries
didn't participate in the study. The students weren't tested on
their spoken English.
�3. Selling Hegel by the kilo
Yoorpean intellectuals, eh? What are they like?
This is not simply a matter of Heidegger joining the Nazi party and
denouncing Jewish colleagues, though that is bad enough. It is also a
matter of recognising that the world is in the shape it is because of
the influence of the most rarefied of minds. Alexandre Koj�ve
confessed that he had read Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit several
times without having understood a word; but once he got it, it
launched a train of thought that has produced, so far, the EEC, Gatt,
Fukuyama's End of History and the fact that your grocer can get busted
for selling you two pounds of potatoes instead of a kilo.
From the little I've read of him Hegel is certainly the best argument
for Anglo-Austrian "analytic" philosophy, which seems to have been
designed to be as unlike Hegelian philosophy as possible without
actually constituting its dialectical antithesis, which would never
do. (If only philosophical schools really could vanish in a puff of
irony, eh, Varied Reader?)
�4. Of priciness and prinsessparades
With real
soljers and everything!
Kronprins Frederik og Mary Donaldson f�r en opvisning af forsvaret,
der vil overg� den planlagte, men aflyste parade for den tidligere
forsvarschef.
Det er ikke ret nemt at finde nogen, der er imod den tre mio. kr. dyre
parade med fly og skibe og bulder og brag, som forsvaret vil holde for
kronprins Frederik og Mary Donaldson den 5. maj.
Kronprinsfred and Knudella Donaldsen will have an army parade, with
fly-bys, but the parade for the former army chief has been cancelled.
It's not that simple to find anyone who is against the 3 million krone
parade with aeroplanes and ships and bulder and noise which the army
wants to hold for Kronprinsfred and Knudella on the 5th of May.
We like plans and ships and bulder and noise, for sure, and we are by
no means in favour of stinting when it comes to Knudella, but we are
startled to learn that our collection of 'Wegian republicain(ne)s is
apparently exhaustive.
[via Birgitte, tack]
[Permalink]
2004-03-09 tea (utc)
Only in la-di-dah DN could a review of an illustrated childrens'
prinsessbock
namecheck Marx:
Prinsessopium �t kvinnor och barn skulle Marx kanske ha sagt, andelen
prinsesslystna m�n �r ju t�mligen begr�nsad.
Prinsessopium for wimmins and childrens, Marx might have said, the
proportion of prinsess-crazy men is of course fairly limited.
Tell that to the many Slitz readers with partyprinsess Madeleines's cleavage's benevolent beigeness beaming down from bluetacked posters, lah-di-dah DN!
But you will surely be as relieved as I to hear that the modern
tree-climbing prinsess gets the all-important ideological all-clear.
[via Citoyenne B, tack, to whom we are also indebted for translation advice.]
[Permalink]
2004-03-09 samwidge, no gravy (utc)
You can dip your bread in my gravy,
but you can't have none of my chops,
You must think I'm crazy,
you will have me calling the cops,
Man, Just as sure as butter melts,
if I give you my chops you'll tell somebody
else,
You can dip your bread in my gravy,
but you can't have none of my chops.
- "You can Dip Your Bread In My Gravy, But You Can't Have None Of My
Chops"
(Fred Longshaw / Mike Jackson)
Aww, Czechia, I was only after your gravy anyway:
The Czech Republic's Hospodarske Noviny warns that the country is ill
prepared to benefit from funding opportunities when it joins the
European Union on 1 May.
"Opportunities, European funds, are coming. Our ability to take them
all, which is the second part of the truth, is lagging," the paper
says.
I feel a consultancy coming on...
[Permalink]
2004-03-09 samwidge (utc)
[Diaryland has been having a spot of bother, if you'll excuse my vivid
originality, but it seems to be better again now. We apologise for
any inconvenience to our Varied Reader.]
To Polandland, where an upheavaling of the meeja landscape is in full
flight as German-owned tabloid Fakt overtakes leading quality
daily and former best-seller Gazeta
Wyborcza in circulation:
Fakt doit en effet son succ�s � une vaste campagne publicitaire, des
jeux et des cadeaux qui attirent en masse les lecteurs. D'autant qu'il
est vendu � bas prix : 1 zloty (0,21 euro). Trois fois moins cher que
Gazeta. Et si Fakt a, selon Maciej Hoffman, �enlev� des lecteurs �
d'autres journaux, surtout � Super Express, un autre quotidien
populaire, � la presse r�gionale et dans une moindre mesure � Gazeta�,
il a avant tout �attir� quelque 250 000 nouveaux lecteurs, �largissant
ainsi le march� de la presse�.
La concurrence se demande si Fakt pourra maintenir
longtemps son prix � un niveau aussi bas, alors que Springer, qui
publie d�j� en Pologne une vingtaine de magazines, dont Newsweek,
compte renforcer la position de son quotidien. Pour ne pas d�pendre
des imprimeries d'o� sort la concurrence, Fakt est, pour l'instant,
imprim� en partie � Berlin et transport� tous les jours en Pologne par
charter. Mais il aura bient�t sa propre imprimerie, qui se construit
pr�s de Varsovie.
In fact Fakt owes its success to an extensive advertising campaign,
as well as games and freebies that bring in a mass readership.
Besides, it's sold at a rock-bottom price: 1 zloty (0.21 euros), a
third the price of Gazeta. And if Fakt is, according to Maciej
Hoffman [directeur of the Chamber of Publisheurs] "poaching readers
from other newspapers, especially from Super Express, another
down-market daily, from the regional press and to a lesser extent from
Gazeta" it has above all "drawn in 250,000 new readers and expanded
the market for the press".
The competition is wondering if Fakt can sustain its low price
indefinitely while Springer [its owners] who already publish
twenty-odd magazines in Polandland, including Newsweek, tries to
reinforce its daily's position. In order not to depend on its
competitors' printers, Fakt is currently partly printed in Berlin and
shipped to Poland on charter flights. But it'll soon have its own
press, which is being built near Warsaw.
Trashbladets and Quotidiens of Quality aren't natural competitors, for
sure, but mostly I like the bit about manufacturing in cut-price
product in Berlin for export to Polandland. Meanwhile I don't have
linkable source for the Berlusconisation of the Hamburg meejascape and
its effect on the recent mayoral election, so I'll just mention it
casually in passing to demonstrate my considerable cosmipolitanisme.
[Permalink]
2004-03-09 morning (utc)
Apparently
the rise of Engerlish as defacto Yoorpean interlanguage is scraping
off its luxuriant patina of idioms:
The degradation from English to Eurolish works in two ways. While life
and colour fade from the feeder languages of Eurolish, the cliches and
platitudes spread like viruses. Most European languages have followed
the verbal Polyfilla trend of replacing "now" with "at this moment
in time" or "finally" with "at the end of the day". The entire
European continent is now covered with "level playing fields". The
pap of predictable platitudes smothers original vivid phrases. The
pollution of conformity spreads inexorably.
(I don't think he's writing like that for a joke, in fact, although I
can't imagine why else anyone would.)
"Original vivid phrases", somewhat smothered, such as "pussy-footing":
"You're pussy footing." was the accusation made by veteran Labour MP
Laurie Cunliffe against bemused fellow members of the Council of
Europe.
In French it was translated as "jouer cache-cache" although it's a
different activity from "hide and seek". To the Italian translator
the idiom was new. Her creditable effort was "kicking the cat."
Better acquainted with the lingo of international pornography, the
Turkish interpreter disguised his idea of the precise meaning with a
delicate "taking part in an English vice."
(Sigh. Have they no Fripp? Have they no Eno?)
So we may conclude that the main problem with his argument is that
it's utter, as we say in the Engleesh, bollocks: "pussyfooting" is
precisely the opposite of an "original vivid phrase", being neither
original nor vivid. ("Level playing field", to choose an example quite
other than at random, is decidedly more vivid.)
It is in fact proverbs and fossilised idioms (like, oh I don't know,
"pussyfooting") that present the most fertile ground for bewilderment
among those who don't already know them, and this precisely because
the vividness has long since worn off from use. In fact, I briefly
contemplated a career supplying "traditional" proverbs and idioms to
obstreperous Eurotories ("I put it to the member from Slovenia that
she is simply whiskering the whelk!" Uproar in the house!) and get
myself gravied-up for life, but then I remembered that I hate the
Tories, and anyway I woke up and it had all been a dream.
Or was it?
[via Language Hat]
[Permalink]
2004-03-08 aternoon (utc)
Just a leetle
bit harder:
Art, wine and culture are the weapons being wielded by the French
government in a battle to stem a decline in the use of French in
Europe.
Paris is offering all three, along with exquisite cuisine and musical
soir�es, to the 10 future Commissioners of the new EU member states
who have been invited to attend free language courses this summer in
Avignon.
This is a bad rehash of a story we covered
weeks ago. (For instance: "Within France the government has taken
strong measures, including introducing a law that made using
anglicisms like le weekend an offence." Such laws have a very limited
domain
of application which it is dishonest and spiteful to omit,
although also very popular, especially among journalistes and
commentateurs.)
And also, courtesy of PF, we have today a special
guest-loony, one Mr G K Chesterton. Take it
away, G K, and don't be in any rush to bring it back:
It is obvious that there is a great deal of difference between being
international and being cosmopolitan. All good men are
international. Nearly all bad men are cosmopolitan. If we are to be
international we must be national. And it is largely because those who
call themselves the friends of peace have not dwelt sufficiently on
this distinction that they do not impress the bulk of any of the
nations to which they belong. International peace means a peace
between nations, not a peace after the destruction of nations, like
the Buddhist peace after the destruction of personality. The golden
age of the good European is like the heaven of the Christian: it is a
place where people will love each other; not like the heaven of the
Hindu, a place where they will be each other. And in the case of
national character this can be seen in a curious way. It will
generally be found, I think, that the more a man really appreciates
and admires the soul of another people the less he will attempt to
imitate it; he will be conscious that there is something in it too
deep and too unmanageable to imitate. The Englishman who has a fancy
for France will try to be French; the Englishman who admires France
will remain obstinately English. This is to be particularly noticed in
the case of our relations with the French, because it is one of the
outstanding peculiarities of the French that their vices are all on
the surface, and their extraordinary virtues concealed. One might
almost say that their vices are the flower of their virtues.
This whole "soul of another people" schtick was never other than very
worrying, it seems to me, and often not inconsiderably worse. One of
the ideas behind my second (not even started) novels was to have
characters from a diverse range of Yoorpean countries with
behaviours corresponding to stereotypes, but (and this is the clever
bit) deliberately mix them up. So you'd have a happy-go-lucky German,
a puntiliously pedantic Italian, an Englishman which is the great
loveur, and so on. This, I continue to believe, would be both
hilarious and instructive, but I am, after all, unspeakably cosmopolitan.
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2004-03-08 post-samwidge (utc)
For you rode east, and I rode west
You rode high, and I rode low
I rather have a kiss of the yellow gypsy's lips
Than all your cash and money-o
- The
Raggle-Taggle Gypsy
The EU newbies appalling records on rights for minorities such as the
Roma has been a fertile source of the gravy,
siphoning off for the abuse of:
There was no shortage of funds from Europe and the US, and Slovaks
realised there was money to be made from the Roma cause. Charities
sprung up overnight, the forms were filled in and the money
secured. But, according to Roma activist Erika Godlova, only 7% of
proceeds has gone towards useful projects. "Slovaks are paying
themselves enormous salaries and taking holidays with this money," she
said. "No one asks us what we need." [...]
There has been a Roma settlement in Letanovce since 1927. A younger
man, his children crouched around the stove trying to get warm, said
no one had any plans to move to Britain after May 1, when Slovakia
joins the EU. "We have no money to travel and we want jobs here. We
are Slovaks." Contrary to popular perception, Roma in former eastern
bloc countries are largely stationary, unlike their counterparts in
western Europe. [...]
The statistics make chilling reading. In the country's sickening
system of educational apartheid, according to Save the Children, the
percentage of Roma in special schools for the "mentally handicapped"
is 75%; Roma children are 28 times more likely to end up in a special
school than non-Roma; even those in mainstream schools are often
segregated into separate classes; and once children are on the special
school track, it is almost impossible for them to switch to a
mainstream establishment and thereby open up a route to university. It
is hardly surprising that Roma representation in parliament is non-
existent, and negligible at local level.
(I added some emphasis. The UKish tabloids, especially the very
hateful Mail and Express have whipped up a frenzy of raciste bullshit
about the flood of Gyppo scroungers which enlargement will surely
unleash unless we immediately make it illegal to be foreign in a
public place.)
But if you're not using all that cash and money-o, Slovakia or anyone
else, I have an extensive range of useless boondoggles and sloppily
accounted projects you could spend it on.
[Permalink]
2004-03-08 nearly samwidge (utc)
Anosognosia (Ανοσογνωσια) is the medical condition of being
unaware of a neurological deficit. It is also, which is the point
here, a word derived from various Greek bits, although probably not by
actual Greeks.
Marvellous stuff, Unicode, isn't it?
[Permalink]
2004-03-08 09:56
Many ancient pagan festivals have of course subsequently been hijacked
by christians for their own nefarious purposes - Twinkletree has been
turned from a festival of light into a bizarre celebration of a
saturated bed-and-breakfast market, while Easter was transformed from
a celebration of Nature's rebirth in spring to a bizarre and gory
meditation on nailing persons to planks.
Whether it was as a defensive precaution against such d�tournements,
or an intrinsic part of the festival from the earliest days has
divided scholarly opinion for centuries, but it seems certain that the
aleatory nature of the celebration has played an important role in the
preservation of the last remaining great pagan celebration, the Beer
Festival, from the attentions of the christians.
The Bristol Beer Festival (the Festival, which is to say, of Beer)'s
concluding session was on Saturday evening, and it was this session
that saw me in attendance to celebrate the age old ceremonies
associated with such occasions.
The entrance-token (or "ticket") is procured in advance, via a shadowy
network of the faithful, and exchanged at the door for a ceremonial
drinking vessel (or "glass") which is typically decorated with
adornments pertaining to the occasion. In this case, it was a
half-pint glass, which was a new experience for me.
Then, the purchase of beer tokens is carried out - the beer providers
accept only tokens as an inducement to dispense the beery goodness in
their custody, so you can readily see as how this will be an important
step.
Then, the consultation of the programme is optionally carried out by
persons taking all this rubbish seriously - personally I'm just as
happy to pick beers with interesting names, although I do also like to
try a couple of the boutique lagers to wind up the real-ale puristes.
And then, finally, we go home, somewhat beered-up. Hoorah!
[Permalink]
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