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Zeteo (ζητέω): to challenge, question, dispute, explore the forgotten and ignored

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Tag: translation

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Asano_Takeji-No_Series-Snow_at_Iwashimizu_Hachiman_Shrine_Kyoto

Kenko, Kerouac, Snyder, Prayer

June 29, 2018 by William Eaton

A book by an American scholar of Japanese literature briefly discusses one of the anecdotes of The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko, a classic which dates back to the fourteenth century. The scholar, Linda Chance, offers the following translation: A priest of the Ninnaji, regretting that he had not paid his respects at Iwashimizu [a Shinto shrine not far from Kyoto] before growing old, took it into his head to do so and set out alone on foot. He prayed at Gokurakuji […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Buddhism, California, denial, Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, Japan, prayer, religion, tourism, translation

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eiffel tower flashing at night, blue with white lights

Dylan, Nobel, Paris, Chimes Flashing

October 19, 2016 by William Eaton

Le monde s’étire s’allonge et se retire comme un accordéon qu’une main sadique tourmente The earth stretches elongated and snaps back like an accordion tortured by a sadic hand Dans les déchirures du ciel, les locomotives en furie In the rips in the sky insane locomotives S’enfuient Take flight Et dans les trous, In the gaps Les roues vertigineuses les bouches les voix Whirling wheels mouths voices Et les chiens du malheur qui aboient à nos trousses And the dogs […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Blaise Cendrars, Bob Dylan, Clintons, French, John Donne, Paris, poetics, poetry, popular music, songs, translation

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Drink's, sign in Troncones, Mexico; photo credit: Jonah Warner, February 2016

O que é felicidade (Corcovado, Kalamazoo)

March 7, 2016 by William Eaton

Backfiring, shall we call this?   First bursts. Sue Ellen Christian, one of Zeteo’s long-time contributors, e-mailed us a draft response to one of the random, crazed shootings with which the United States is now plagued. As has been reported, several residents of her town, Kalamazoo, Michigan, were allegedly gunned down by an Uber driver. Random victims, and thus also reminders of how we are all random victims or the random fortunate (and some combination of the two). For example, thanks […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: airships, bossa nova, Dada, First World War, happiness, labor unions, language, poverty, random shooting, Stuart Hall, translation, Uber, work, Zen koan

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Bible / Translation / Kushner / Genesis

October 29, 2015 by Walter Cummins

Biblical Uncertainties   I came to Aviya Kushner’s The Grammar of God well prepared, having, a month before the book was published, heard her talk about her arduous ten-year writing process. When I first learned of her topic, Biblical translation, I expected a discussion of the typical complexities of rendering a work in a language other than its original. But she began her talk with a riveting revelation. Kushner, having grown up in a Hebrew-speaking home in an Orthodox community […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Aviya Kushner, Genesis, The Bible, translation, war

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Larkin, Not Really in Translation

August 13, 2015 by William Eaton

“Counting” is a beautiful little Philip Larkin poem that I had not read before encountering it in a bilingual collection, with French translations: La vie avec un trou dedans. Thinking in terms of one Is easily done — One room, one bed, one chair, One person there, Makes perfect sense; one set Of wishes can be met, One coffin filled. But counting up to two Is harder to do; For one must be denied Before it’s tried. This may also […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: New York Review of Books, Philip Larkin, poetry, translation, Victor Hugo

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The solitudes of this America

July 23, 2015 by William Eaton

In the woods of Michigan in 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville recounts, he found a not entirely unfamiliar solitude, but what was unusual was that, unlike previously, when he had visited the ruins of ancient European civilizations, the solitudes of America led his mind to project forward, losing itself “dans un immense avenir” (in a vast future). He and his traveling companion, also from France, asked themselves why fate had given them this quite singular opportunity to see both a portion […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: de Tocqueville, indigenous people, natu, solitude, translation, United States of America, Western civilization, Willard Van Orman Quine, Wittgenstein

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We’re not here for you to upbraid

August 17, 2014 by William Eaton

A very loose translation of a once better known Boris Vian lyric [print_link] [email_link]   One nice morning in July, the alarm At dawn it breaks the calm “My doll,” I said, “better shake a leg” Today’s the today, not to be missed Get to the boulevard without delay To see parading the Zanzibar King But suddenly the police — we’re turned away And I replied We’re not here for you to upbraid We’re just here to see the parade We’re […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: French, jazz, songs, translation

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Sartre’s Partridges

June 22, 2014 by William Eaton

{click for pdf}   An e-mail discussion with the philosopher and Zeteo contributor Ed Mooney has led me back to two paragraphs in Sartre’s L’Être et le néant (Being and Nothingness). One of the oft-quoted (in English) lines from these paragraphs is “my acts cause values to spring up like partridges,” and I harbor hopes of someday grappling, in a short essay or two, with an extrapolation of this line. Very briefly here, this extrapolation would revisit the role of skepticism, […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: ethics, freedom, Jean-Paul Sartre, morals, translation, values

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Arabian Red Fox, photograph by Jem Babbington, appears on Birds of Saudi Arabia website

Translating Dickinson

June 11, 2014 by William Eaton

By William Eaton   A discussion of four Emily Dickinson poems in the context of Françoise Delphy’s French translations appearing in Poésies complètes : Edition bilingue français-anglais by Emily Dickinson and Françoise Delphy (Flammarion, 2009).   I.  The Articulate Inarticulate An early reader of Emily Dickinson’s poems used this phrase—“the articulate inarticulate”—to describe her, and for me it provides a way into “translating” or seeking means of understanding one of my favorites among her poems, here quoted in its entirety: […]

Categories: Review • Tags: Emily Dickinson, French, poetry, translation

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Welcome to Zeteo, since 2012

Zeteo is for people who are readers, lookers, listeners, thinkers. Increasingly we are interested in short texts that call attention to other texts, works of art or music that deserve more attention than they are getting. And we are interested similarly in historical phenomena, ignored aspects of contemporary life, . . . We look forward to hearing about your ideas, your reading, what you’ve seen . . .

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    • Reading a poem/A poet reading
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