Translating Bialik, Take 1: "In the City of Slaughter"

"?חציר תלוש העם - ואם-יש לתלוש תקווה"

As is well known, Ch. N. Bialik wrote his famous poem “בעיר ההרגה”/"In the City of Slaughter," as a response to the infamous Kishniev Pogrom of 1903. The question in the above title, posed by Bialik in line 173, is for me one of the most important passages of the epic. Klein translates it as “The people is plucked grass; can plucked grass grow again?” but I believe some of the meaning is compromised in order to fit into Klein’s admirable attempt (a successful one overall) to maintain the rhyme and rhythm of the high Hebrew in his Victorian-esque translation. I personally would interpret it as “the nation is [like] plucked grass – and is there any hope for the plucked?” I find the key difference between the two translations is with the word תקווה, hope, left out entirely in the Klein edition. The scathing nature of Bialik’s tone throughout the poem is well documented and is based on his lack of faith in East European Jewry to rise to the challenge of self-defense in an age of heightened political self-awareness.

As Professor Alan Mintz aptly writes in his introduction to the Kishniev 100 collection of essays, “the shame of mass victimization had spurred the emergence of political Zionism and Jewish socialism, both of which emphasized the exigent need for organized self-defense” (p.1). Even though there were examples of Jewish resistance in the Kishniev pogroms - documented by Bialik in his notebooks but problematically ignored in the poem itself, these instances were but individual blades of grass among the torn fields, at the end of the day still plucked and disseminated to die out like the rest of the massacred innocents. On the one hand, if one only reads Klein in English one can legitimately debate whether grass can regrow if replanted -- and surely it can. But Bialik’s worry is not in the short term whether Jews will find a new home and life in a neighboring village or return to life as usual in Kishniev. His question is meta: how long can a people continue like this? For if indeed the nation was spread so thin with stocks so easily uprooted, then was there any long term hope to be found? It is within this context that the line should be read, and unfortunately the reader loses some of it in Klein’s translation.

Miike Snow, Keeping it Real

I dunno what it is, but I love this song "Animal," by Miike Snow

Pretty simple riff, very catchy. Love (some of) the lyrics, too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLHjKgQt39s

Theo-ethical Problems with Radha Worship

Radha, one of several revered goddesses in the Hindu tradition, provides her worshipers with what is widely considered an appropriate metaphor for the divine-human love affair. David Kinsley writes in his pan-Hindu text/source book, Hindu Goddesses, of the origins of the divine love relationship between Radha and the extremely important male deity, Krishna. Explicit references to Radha in the Hindu cannon do not appear until rather late in the religion's trajectory, most notably in Jayadeva's Gitagovinda (see below post).

Kinsley writes, however, that starting in Northern India in roughly 500 C.E. there began a "mythological tradition surrounding Krishna's sojourn in Vraja and his dalliance there with the gopis, the cowherd women of the village" (p.83). It is from the gopi tradition that the character of Radha truly develops. Although Krishna had long been worshiped as a supreme god, the Vraja mythology additionally gives him the reputation as ideal lover. Kinsley expounds:

The gopis "are all married women, but none is able to resist Krishna's beauty and charm. He is described as retiring to the woods, where he plays his flute on autumn nights when the moon is full. Hearing the music, the women are driven mad with passion and give up their domestic roles and chores to dash away to be with Krishna [...] They are so distraught and frenzied as they rush to his side that their clothes and jewelry come loose and fall off (10.29.3-7). The text makes no attempt to deny the impropriety of the gopis' leaving their husbands and abandoning their social responsibilities in order to make love to Krishna" (p.84).

Indeed, Kinsley continues, "the nature of true devotion, the text [in this case, the Bhagavata-purana] says, is highly emotional and causes horripilation, tears, loss of control, and frenzy (11.14.23-24). Those who love the Lord truly behave like the gopis. When they hear his call they abandon everything to be with him. Even though they are married [...], even though they incur the censure of society, they rush off to be with Krishna when they hear his call" (84-85).

This utter disregard for societal norms and values is thus an appropriate metaphor for how one should act in devotion toward God. Jayadeva takes this gopi model of many cowherdesses and applies it specifically to Radha in his epic, Gitagovinda, elevating Radha's status as a gopi higher and more special to Krishna than the other women, and thus making her a specific object of worship.

Does anyone see something wrong with this story? Look, I imagine that if I had been born female and encountered someone who seemed to be a combination of King David's military prowess and musical skills and King Solomon's ability to pull off some 1,000 wives and still keep the peace in the home, I might be tempted to cheat, too. Even though Kinsley, and to be sure the theologians who are Radha and Krishna devotees, explain that the love affair notion is just a metaphor for how one should act toward his/her god, it seems more than a little problematic to encourage infidelity, metaphorical or not. What kind of example does it send to the men out there? Maybe this is crude, but it's hard not to think of the Krishna paradigm as being misappropriated to encourage extra-marital relationships and upon chastisement using religious texts to justify actions.

I don't know, something about the cheating gopi just doesn't rub me the right way even if it is at the end of the day her choice...

Jayadeva, in Gitagovinda

Barbara Stoler Miller writes in her introduction of Jayadeva's Gitagovinda that "the lyrical techniques of Jayadeva’s songs combine with the conventional language of Sanskrit erotic poetry to express the intimate power of divine love."

I think I know what she's talking about; the following is from the beginning of the 12th century epic love poem:

"Like a flowering creeper [Radha wandered] in the forest wilderness,
Seeking Krishna in his many haunts.
The god of love increased her ordeal,
Tormenting her with fevered thoughts,
And her friend sang to heighten the mood..."

And really, it gets much more explicit.
Indian love poetry is awesome.

אהבה ודת

היה לי כבר את השיחה הזאת
זה לא חדש ואני מכיר טוב את הצדדים
ואפילו את התשובות
אבל כל פעם שהשיחה מגיעה, היא חוזרת עם יותר תשוקה וחשיבות
אם אין כח, אין תורה. נכון?
למה אני מתווכח אם בסוף היום זה לא למשהו יותר גדול..
וזה בעצם בוויכוח: הרגשה נגד רגש נגד הרגשה
[האם באמת יש תשובה?]

11.11.2010

שיחה במיטה

ולמה שלא נעוף מפה?
על מה אתה מדבד?
את מבינה למה אני מתכוון: את ואני
אני אפילו לא יודעת מה שם המשפחה שלך!
אל תצחקי עליי, יש מהשהו בינינו, אני יודע שאת מרגישה את זה
אתה חמוד
אני רציני
אתה חיי בעננים
גבוהה איתך
טוב. אז לאן נעוף?
לי לא אכפת. ווניס. או מצפה רמון. רק שנהיה ביחד
חחחחה, אבל אתה עוזב מחר...
אה, זה...
אז נצטרך לעוף עכשיו
את רצינית?
אתה רציני?
וואללה
ווניס?
ווניס...

11.4.2010

Brenner's Existential Zionism

Beautiful passage from Brenner's novella, "Nerves," when the storyteller first sets eyes on the port of Jaffa in Turkish era Palestine:

"And I was forced to acknowledge once again that ancient truth that even though one 'knows' that all things are equally unimportant and ultimately even the same, one cannot, as long as one lives and breathes, ignore the differences between one man and another, one man and another, one place and another, one life and another, and one human condition and another...and that despite my intellectual awareness, I could not help feeling different emotions at different times that might be worlds apart from each other, that might sometimes be of the simplest, most humanly universal variety, and at others of the most mysteriously bizarre...because I tell you, there are mysterious combinations of circumstances in this life, my friend..."

My take:

Yosef Chaim Brenner’s 1910 novella, “Nerves,” is a reflection on his anxious excitement over the Zionist project. The reader sees that Brenner, through the eyes of the storyteller, has traveled through many diasporic lands—Ukraine, New York, London, Berlin, and Cairo, with the hopes “of finding a foothold, any hold” (p.37) in the world. However, the storyteller knows that his circumstances will never allow for him to find such a hold in the diaspora and thus yearns “for a place to call my own, which as a Jew was something I had never had” (p.37). “Nerves” is a classic conflict between head and heart: on the one hand Brenner’s intellect tells him that in the greater scheme of things, on the meta level of the existentialist, there is no such thing as a Jewish homeland—“what on earth do we and the land of Judea really have to do with each other?” (p.51)

At the same time, when Brenner’s character allows his emotions to take over, he confesses that there is something special about the Biblical homeland. As the opening passage confirms, he cannot help himself. Try as he might to deny that special connection, when he sees the Haifa shores for the first time he really does “believe in the beauty of nature…of the cosmos…of something even higher than that” (p.57). That he attempts to diminish this feeling by attributing it to his nerves shows only that his rational side is responding back due to his harsh reality as a pioneer. It is this nervous angst that causes Brenner to splice comments like those about the “bird whose Hebrew name” (p.32) was not yet known throughout the novella. They reflect the same struggle of storyteller: can the Jewish sufferer’s eternal wandering actually end with settlement in Israel? Although life in the Orient is by no means easy, the answer, of course, is unequivocally yes.