Amsteldam van Constantijn Huygens

This post includes an English translation. When Bemkah first showed me a few lines of this poem, I tried to find an English translation online, but I could not. So my Oma helped me translate the poem, and I think we've gotten the gist of it quite well, though it doesn't sound nearly as marvellous in English as it does in its original Seventeenth century Dutch.

Amsteldam

"Ghemeen’ verwondering betaemt mijn’ wond’ren niet,
De Vreemdeling behoort te swijmen die mij siet.
Swijmt, Vreemdeling, en segt, Hoe komen all’ de machten
Van all dat machtigh is besloten in uw’ grachten?
Hoe komt ghij, gulde Veen, aen ’s hemels overdaedt?
Packhuys van Oost en West, heel Water en heel Straet,
Tweemael-Venetien, waer’s ’tende van uw’ wallen?
Segt meer, segt, Vreemdeling. Segt liever niet met allen:
Roemt Roomen, prijst Parijs, kraeyt Cairos heerlickheit;
Die schricklixt van mij swijgt heeft aller best geseyt."


Bemkah gave me this photo of the first four lines of the poem painted at the entrance of a canal, which is a rather fitting place for it.

And now the English translation:

Amsterdam

Usually not astonished as by a miracle,
The stranger must be dizzy when he sees me.
Become dizzy, Stranger, and say, 'Why is all the power,
All that power closed in your canals?
How did you get, golden Veen, some of Heaven's splendour?
Warehouses from East to West, all along the canals and the streets,
Twice Venice's size, where is the end of your walls?
Say more, say, Stranger. But do not say with all:
Honour Rome, Praise Paris, shout Cairo's glory;
The worst of my silence has said it the best of all.

Petra, denk je dat dit een goede vertaling is? Ik denk 't wel!

Surrealism, alienation and hope in Murakami

Welcome to the works of Haruki Murakami, one who writes within what appears to be an ordinary world  - until you discover that there are surreal facts of life that would not occur in your own city, not even in the real Tokyo. 12 of his books have been translated into English.

In Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World there is a scientist who discovered that the consciousness is a physical device and can be altered and used to 'shuffle' sensitive data. Unfortunately, for one man whose conscious was involved, he ends up stuck in one particular version of his consciousness - from the outside, he appears to be asleep, but on the inside, the time in his mind is eternally subdividing as he faces a half-life separated from Shadow (his conscious, or soul, which has all of his memories and deep emotions).

In A Wild Sheep Chase a very secretive agency is trying to find one particular sheep in northern Japan. This a very ambitious and ruthless sheep that once inhabited the now-dying man who had become the ultimate controller of Japan, invisibly controlling all government and private sectors.

Compared with these, After Dark does not seem quite so bizarre at first. It is very late at night, Mari Asai is reading in all-night cafe and some trombone player she had met once at a pool comes and starts talking to her. Quite normal. But in the next chapter we find out that Mari's sister Eri has been asleep for 2 months, only waking every now and then to eat or go to the toilet, and she only does that when the rest of the family is asleep or absent from the house. We are an invisible minute camera that can float in the air in Eri's room, and soon see that she has somehow ended up inside a room on the television in her bedroom, and we realise there is no way for her to get out of that room in the television. There is also a Chinese prostitute who got her period at a delicate moment, and is then assaulted by her client. When the gang that had forced the girl into prostitution learns about this, they feel honour bound to defend her, and begin a hunt for the attacker that will not end until the time, some day, some where, he feels a tap on the shoulder. The gang warns him, 'You'll never get away.'

Amongst all this action are some poignant, disturbing tropes. Mirrors that hold the reflections of a person after the person has left the room. A man with a skin-tight mask that betrays nothing of his features or expressions, and yet we can sense where he is staring. People who can keep such a straight face, and such intense eye contact, that it is impossible to know what they are thinking and only feel intimidated. Television screens, some of which act as mirrors, some providing background noise for characters as they go about their daily routine, one of which turns on all by itself and somehow sucks a person into it.  These reflections and masks serve a purpose. They show how disconnected society is now, how impersonal, and somewhat unreadable. They show indifference, in people not caring enough to visibly show any feeling on their faces. There is also a hint of the ever-watchful Big Brother in this, that is to say, beneath any of these masks, reflections, diversions, there could be someone watching you, your movements, even hunting you down.

Yet there's a suprising amount of care in the story as well. Humanity's redeeming quality of helping each other when it is needed, and the forming of deep, intense connections between people. Kaoru lets Mari sleep in an unoccupied room in the love hotel, Takahashi and Mari tell each other about fears and memories they had never told anyone else, and finally, after years of feeling distant and separate from her older sister, though they have both lived at home all the time, Mari discovers that she is very closely bonded to her sister and would not want to be without her.

For all of this detail, and the interweaving of several different narratives, this is one of Murakami's shortest works, at only 200 pages. It is a wonderful introduction to his style, and well worth reading.

bite size Capote

A snippet of Breakfast at Tiffany's, purely because it mentions a few Australians. Perhaps this would be more appropriate on ANZAC Day, but I'm posting it now anyway...

On the way home I noticed a cab-driver crowd gathered in front of P. J. Clark's saloon, apparently attracted there by a happy group of whiskey-eyed Australian army officers baritoning 'Waltzing Matilda'. As they sang they took turns spin-dancing a girl over the cobbles under the El; and the girl, Miss Golightly, to be sure, floated round in their arms light as a scarf. p. 19-20, Penguin edition 2008

 

Image from this listserve post commemorating 

WWI on Armistace/Remembrance Day 2008.

It's not quite faithful to the period of the book, since that

is set in the '40s, but Google wasn't being very 

helpful today.