Reading

Here’s something from my reading of War and peace, actually from the very good introduction by Richard Pevear to the wonderful translation by the same and his wife: the shortest sentence in War and Peace is kápli kápali, which is translated by the Pevears as drops dripped. Richard Peavear uses this example to illustrate the quality of their translation, that it pays close attention to the musicality of the original. Interestingly, none of the other translations translate these two words with such poetry or with the same attention to the rhythm of the original words.

‘Drops dripped. Quiet talk went on. Horses neighed and scuffled. Someone snored.’

Wonderful stuff.

The death of Andrei is of course a highlight. I was shocked to hear him say the words Piti, piti, and boom, boom. I immediately heard the Prokofiev music that accompanies these words in the opera, without having been aware what was going on in the opera. I’d assumed they were Prokofiev’s invention and not Tolstoy’s. Such an odd and miraculous passage both in the novel and in the opera.

I’ve got behind. Perhaps I won’t say anything about reading Pnin. Disappointing. There I’ve said something. Too clever by half. There’s something else.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle was recommended by a friend and all I can say is that I wish I’d written it myself, or that I’d read it as a child. Loved it. Amazing what  writers for children can get away with.

I read all 620 pages of American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. Didn’t mean to but couldn’t put it down.

And I read a Canadian novel that my paperback publisher Stephanie Sweeney gave to me, and for the life of me I can’t remember what it’s called, which ist errible of me but not untypical. I left my copy with my mother and can’t check just at the moment. It has a really wonderful opening, and again I devoured all 480 pages of it in a day or two.

I read Tolstoy’s last short story Hadji Murat. It could have been written yesterday the style is so fresh and the content so relevant.

And I never got back about finishing Proust again. My memory wasn’t entirely at fault. Marcel does not go back to venice, but I had forgotten that physical travel is not the only kind of travel available to him. He does go back in memory as he steps on the threshold just before the long amazing last scene called le bal de tetes.