Voltaire and the Semiotics of Dress

For those who doubt that there is a semiotics of dress, here is Voltaire wigged and wigless. Many thanks to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. for displaying these busts in near tandem.

La Bruyère on Human Inconstancy

It's a shame so many Anglophones don't read or even know of La Bruyère.  Here's some food for thought from his clever pen (as translated by Jean Stewart):  "After making a close and mature study of men, and recognizing the wrongness of their thoughts, their feelings, their tastes and affections, one is forced to admit that they have less to lose by inconstancy than by persistence."

Joseph Ransdell on Charles Sanders Peirce

"When the truth about Peirce's life and accomplishments becomes generally known, it will be perceived that he was not only the most omnicompetent scientific mind of his time, perhaps never subsequently to be equalled, but also a moral hero of the intellect, of the stature of Socrates: a veritable icon or paradigm of philosophia--which really means devotion to the search for truth . . . ." Joseph Ransdell, Semiotic Objectivity in Frontiers in Semiotics 240 (John Deely et al. eds., 1986).

Fantastic Cognitive Emotion & the Law Symposium Held at Wake Law 2/22/19

Many thanks to the thoughtful speakers and Wake Law Review students who made possible this engaging February 22, 2019 symposium on the inseparability of emotion and reason in legal and other reasoning. The symposium volume will be forthcoming.  Read more about cognitive emotion and the law here.

Miscellaneous French Verse Translations

When translating verse, I think one should try to capture both the form (meter, line positions, rhyme scheme, etc.) and substance to the extent possible and to the extent not cumbersome* in the new language.  "To the extent possible" can require much work that I think is often missing from much translation.  I also think the original should be printed on the opposing page so the reader can judge the success for herself. 

 

*Where end stopping or alexandrines, for example, seem cumbersome in English, I would think the original poet would want substitutes that distract less in English. Thus I've often used iambic pentameter in lieu of hexameter.  I've also often avoided end stopping where that seemed a distraction (my translation of Phaedre for example).

Here are the English pages of some of my dabblings along these lines.  I think the Veraline & Du Bellay present especially hard challenges and I keep tweaking......

 

I.  Verlaine: MacIntyre claimed: “No one has ever translated, or can or will translate [Chanson d'automne]; yet it offers the supreme challenge, the shifting lure of the bright impossible.” Maybe MacIntyre didn’t try hard enough?