The Book Gallery, Phoenix, AZ

It’s a fantastic place for rare and out-of-print books and great looking volumes of literature.  Oh, and for spending a couple of hours searching through their stacks.  I found a couple volumes of Joseph Franks’ Dostoevsky biographies that I had been looking for and figured I’d brush up on some elementary physics with a Feynman book.  

(Raziel Hamalach, Amsterdam, Kabbalah book, 1701)

The Tenach, Bible, Gematria, and Names

My classmate (three years of Hebrew language together), gave an awesome presentation this past semester on Hebrew names in the Tenach (Torah) and Bible with their translations and meanings.  I knew some of the names and their meanings, but her research was so in-depth that it was completely engrossing and gave me things to contemplate.  

I started to think about the Tenach and Bible from a literature and oral tradition standpoint and how fascinating it can be, even for someone nonreligious, nontheist, atheist, or ignorant of Judeao-Christian traditions.

Hebrew names in the Torah and Bible symbolize or represent their characters/personality and hint at actions within the respective books.  The names hold meaning and, from a literature standpoint, the stories would appear to have come first and the names created afterwards.  The origin of the stories can find their roots in ancient creation stories and myths of Mesopotamia/Sumeria and they are presumed to be passed down generations through oral traditions of storytelling, which is fascinating in itself: thousands of years of storytelling… it’s appealing to a literature freak like myself.  This storytelling culture is not unique to the middle east and I could go off on a tangent here about it… but I won’t right now.  

To give an example of a symbolic name, we can look at “ישראל” or “Israel,” the name given to Jacob (Yakov) in the Tanach by God after his battle with the angel.  There are at least two interpretations of his new name when we break it down to the root words.  The first three characters of his name, “ישר” (yish-arr), means “straight/honest” and the last two characters, “אל” (al), means “God,” so his name in this context means “honest to God” and portrays his changed character and showing Israel’s loyalty to God.  Another way to look at the name is to see the “י” or “ih” at the beginning of the word to reference the future sense of the word, “שר” (shar), meaning “minister.”  In keeping the last two characters, “אל” (al) meaning “God,” putting the words together makes “Israel” mean “he will be the minister of God” showing his future with just his name.  It was a little difficult to explain this, so I hope it’s not too confusing.   

Anyway, to add complexities to the matter, Gematria comes along (associating numbers with Hebrew letters: א=1, ב=2) and names of the biblical characters take on more or added meaning.  We talked about how the infamous 666 came from Revelations and that John, who is attributed with writing it, could have been influenced in associating the anti-christ with the Roman emperor Nero, who is infamous for his horrendous acts AND… when computing gematria to the emperor’s name, it equates to 666. So… no devil, only the infamous Nero, don’t worry, he’s dead.  

Regardless of your feelings or beliefs on religion, this is pretty damn neato.

(Domenichino’s Cumaean Sibyl (1620-3)) This painting is used on the Oxford Press’ cover of Madame de Stael’s Corrine, or Italy and I think it captures the kind of person Corrine and de Stael represent to their audiences… the inspiring genius.

Part III of III: Intertextual Romanticism or A Link Through a Couple of Cool Novels and a Poem: Madame de Stael linked to Benjamin Constant (Romantically) and linked to Alexander Pushkin (post-death, not Romantically).

This small chapter brings to a close my sloppy and and hopefully somewhat interesting link through some cool and emotionally tortured Romantic (big R, not small r) authors from France and Russia.  Madame de Stael, noted anti-Napoleonist, had a rollercoaster affair with Benjamin Constant (little known inside the U.S. unfortunately) for over a decade.  Her prose can be a challenge because of its density, she took lots of lovers, was not really that attractive physically (look at paintings of her… she seems to grow a thick mustache as she ages).  I mean, it’s not that uncommon, but the painters included it and it isn’t very flattering at all for a Romantic heroine, dammit… but de Stael was a larger than life celebrity for her time and her novel, Corrine, or Italy, is fantastic - part travelogue, all European Romanticism.  I’ve never been to Italy, but her writing about the ancient art of Rome allowed me to picture it accurately (at least, according to pictures I’ve seen).  Besides this novel and her appearances and lovers, she is a tremendous talent in literature.  

The connection:  

In Part I, I noted how Constant’s novel, Adolphe, was a somewhat autobiographical-disguised-as-a-novel account of his love affair with de Stael and told about Pushkin’s co-option of Constant’s fictional love letters in Part II, in Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin.  There really isn’t a real-life connection between Pushkin and de Stael, but Pushkin respected her, and so that’s the small link.  When I was scourging through my university library’s Pushkin collection while doing my research, I came across an invaluable book:  The Critical Prose of Alexander Pushkin (with Critical Essays by Four Russian Romantic Poets) - edited by Carl Proffer.  It translates Pushkin’s criticism and includes his contemporary critics.  In response to Russian critic Mr. A. M. and his condemnation of de Stael and her writings, Pushkin writes this high praise of her:

“One should speak of this lady [Pushkin co-opts the critic’s use of “lady”] in the courteous language of an educated person.  This lady was rewarded with the persecution of Napoleon, the trust of monarchs, the respect of Europe- and the very discourteous and not very bright journal article of Mr. A. M.” (27)

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy’s study room in his estate house within Yasnaya Poliana.  

His boyhood and adulthood estate is now the Yasnaya Poliana Tolstoy Museum.  I hear that it’s a difficult trek to make from Moscow if you have poor Russian skills.  One of you, please corroborate this for me.

“L. N. Tolstoy in his study. Iasnaia Poliana, 1908. Photo by K. K. Bulla.”

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy.  Iasnaia Poliana (Yasnaya Polyana) was the large estate Tolstoy was born in and returned to raise his family on later in his life.  In 1908, Tolstoy was 80 years old and had already written all of his great novels.  In fact, he had given up novel writing, seeing it as a lesser art and his talents better used in philosophical type writings.  Although, many of his great short stories were still being written.  

Oh, for those who have seen The Last Station, the couch on the right is most likely the one Tolstoy was born on.  

This is not an old book, but it is a partial retelling of the ancient Navajo tale of the two brothers, Child Borne of Water and Monster Slayer.  The water color illustrations are wonderfuly done by Baje Whitethorne and the story is nicely told by Vee Browne. 

It is a children’s story and the foreward of the book tells the reader that these tales should only be read in the winter time before the thaw.

Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground and other stories; 1961 paperback edition.

“Now I want to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not, why I couldn’t even become an insect.  I must first solemnly declare that I tried many times to become one.”

Isaac Babel was an amazing short story writer.  He was a Soviet writer with a tragic history and his works were almost erased from public knowledge.  My introduction to Babel was through his Red Calvary stories which were incredible; Jews and Cossacks, horseback and war, lots of brutality.  This edition is from 1960.

“Silence overcame all.  Only the moon, clasping in her blue hands her round, bright, carefree face, wandered like a vagrant outside the window.”

- Crossing into Poland

Jean-Paul Sartre, Troubled Sleep, The Age of Reason; these editions were published in 1968.

I came across these copies on my Mother’s bookshelves and they consequently became MY copies.  I had never read or heard of Sartre when I was 16 and was interested in reading these books mostly because of the disturbing art on the covers.  

A couple of years later, I had the jump on my existentialist friends who had only read Nausea.  A couple of years after that, I stopped mentioning Sartre in casual conversation, but I still like these books.

Hermann Hesse, Demian; this edition was published in 1968.

 A lesser known book than Siddhartha is today.  It involves an insightful use of Freudian psychoanalysis mixed with Hesse’s own thoughts on the inner workings of the growing mind.

A few of my Hermann Hesse paperbacks.  These were printed in 1971-2.  These were read during my own “Steppenwolf” phase.

ladyhsj:

Words cannot express how much I <3 this book…

Ellison was grand and so was this book.  I love it, too.

stuartinwashington:

Here’s a long interview at The Millions with Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the superstar Russian-to-English translating team that has translated many books by Tolstoy, Chekhov and Dostoevsky, among others.

I was surprised to learn that only one of them can read Russian. It’s an interesting system:

So how do they do it? Pevear and Volokhonsky are candid about their tag-team approach to translation. Volokhonsky, a native speaker of Russian, pores over the original text first and creates a transliterated draft marked with her comments about the author’s literary style. Pevear, who does not read Russian, works from that draft to polish the English text, discussing pressing questions that emerge along the way with Volokhonsky. Should any disagreements emerge, Pevear makes the call. As Volokhonsky recently told Jeffrey Tractenberg in the Wall Street Journal:

Richard is a native speaker of English. I’m a native speaker of Russian. My task is to explain to Richard what is happening in the Russian text. Then it is up to him to do what he can. The final word is always his. I can say this is not quite what the Russian says. Either he finds something that satisfies me or he says no, this is how we’re going to do it. We discuss endlessly and sometimes it becomes a nuisance because we return to it again and again even after the manuscript goes off. But we really don’t quarrel. It would be much more interesting if we did.

I remember reading a similar article/interview in The New Yorker with Pevear and Volokhonsky.  I love reading their translations of Dostoevski.  

I’m taking a Russian lit class next semester for fun and I would like to see what native speakers think about their translations, too.