Sian

I've been reading, agian.  This time, it's the Divine Comedy...  I'm reading it in parallell, which is to say that I have side-by-side English/Italian texts.  And this has been going fairly well, as far as the Inferno and the Purgatorio go.  The problem comes when you finally get to the Paradiso.  Namely, I'm having trouble finding a copy in parallell in town.  And I happen to like the whole ritual of walking into a book store, browsing for an hour or two, and ultimately leaving with a stack of crisp, clean books with pointy corners and slick covers.  I even like the human contact.  There is something reassuring about the fact that no matter where you are, or what bookstore you're in, the proprietor will invariably say something effervescent, outgoing, and somehow inappropriate.  I remember having a discussion about "Used" vs. "Previously owned" books when I was about twelve.  I buy used books--the kind with the previous owner's notes scribbled in the margins, the kind that fall open, automatically to the past owners' favorite passages.--and this guy was trying to convince me that his "previously owned" books were just as good as new.  A note to any of my professors who might be reading this--I will love you forever, if you leave me just one of your used books.  So I picked up a copy of the Pinsky translation, at the local bookstore, and was asked if I were reading it for class at the Community college (If I had been in a better mood, I probably would have taken this to mean that I look about eighteen...  I really didn't see it as a compliment.)  And then, when I bought the Purgatorio, for some reason, my roommate and I were talking about comic books, and Sandman came up, iliciting a long monologue on the author of those illustrious graphic novels of the eighties.  I'm really not that much of a fan, although, I will admit that the library is permanently engraved on my psyche--there, where all the books that were ever written or thought of are stored-- sure as heck sounds like heaven to me.  So, anyway, the Paradiso seems to be one of those things that exists in Penquin classics--English only on news-print editions--or I'll have to send away for it.

I do not speak Italian.  But, I've had a little Latin, here, and there, and it's enough to scrape by and even appreciate the poetics of the orriginal.  I do not wish to buy a copy in English only.  I have fallen in love with the idea of parallell texts, since I was in college.  And, the more language I study, the more fun I have with them.  I don't speak foreign languages.  I think of it more as zooming out on the fractal geometry of human utterance.  I really am not interested in learning to say "where's the crapper?"  It's more a matter of looking at the patterns.  I like to have the (name that orriginal language) text right there, so I can look at the patterns,

They say that ninety percent of the people who read the Inferno don't go on to read the rest of the book.  So, that's the light in which I'm taking this latest thing.  It doesn't really matter all that much, because I always seem to be buying books off the internet, anyway. 

posted by: SianNorah at 15:36 | link | comments

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