Au fil de nos lectures, in English please!

Zen Littéraire Messages : 63288 Inscription le : 08/11/2007

Après l'idée de Darkanny de consacrer un fil à des échanges en anglais, on va pour l'instant pour le fil avec les citations en anglais Very Happy

Pour débuter, il ne pouvait pas y avoir autre que cet auteur avec lequel j'ai repris ma lecture en anglais après des années d'abandon: Paul Auster, The Invention of Solitude

Au fil de nos lectures, in English please! A4028

Au fil de nos lectures, in English please! A4028

There was a cable television in his grandfather’s apartment, with more channels that A. had ever known existed. Whenever he turned it on, there seemed to be a baseball game in progress. Not only was he able to follow the Yankees and Mets of New York, but the Red Sox of Boston, the Phillies of Philadelphia, and the Braves of Atlanta. Not to speak of the little bonuses occasionally provided during the afternoon: the games from the Japanese major leagues, for example (and his fascination with the constant beating of the drums during the course of the game), or, even more strangely, the Little League championships from Long Island. To immerse himself in these games was to fill his mind striving to enter a place of pure form. Despite the agitation on the field, baseball offered itself to him as an image of that which does not move, and therefore a place where his mind could be at rest, secure in its refuge against the mutabilities of the world.
He had spent his entire childhood playing it. From the first muddy days in early March to the last frozen afternoons of late October. He had played well, with an almost obsessive devotion. Not only had it given him a feeling for his own possibilities, convinced him that he was not entirely hopeless in the eyes of others, but it had been the thing that drew him out from the solitary enclosures of his early childhood. It had initiated him into the world of the other, but at the same time it was something he could also keep within himself. Baseball was a terrain rich in potential for revery. He fantasized about it continually, projecting himself into a New York Giants uniform and trotting out to his position at third base in the Polo Grounds, with the crowd cheering wildly at the mention of his name over the loudspeakers. Day after day, he would come home from school and throw a tennis ball against the steps of his house, pretending that each gesture was a part of the World Series game unfolding in his head. It always came down to two outs in the bottom of the ninth, a man on base, the Giants trailing by one. He was always the batter, and he always hit the game-winning homerun.

As he sat through those long summer days in his grandfather’s apartment, he began to see that the power of baseball was for him the power of memory. Memory in both senses of the word: as a catalyst for remembering his own life and as an artificial structure for ordering the historical past. 1960, for example, was the year Kennedy was elected president; it was also the year of A’s Bar Mitzvah, the year he supposedly reached manhood. But the first image that springs to his mind when 1960 is mentioned is Bill Mazeroski’s homerun that beat the Yankees in the World Series. He can still see the ball soaring over the Forbes Field fence–that high, dark barrier, so densely cluttered with white numbers–and by recalling the sensations of that moment, that abrupt and stunning instant of pleasure, he is able to re-enter his own past, to stand in a world that would otherwise be lost to him.
He reads in a book: since 1893 (the year before his grandfather was born), when the pitcher’s mound was moved back ten feet, the shape of the field has not changed. The diamond is a part of our consciousness. Its pristine geometry of white lines, green grass, and brown dirt is an icon as familiar as the stars and stripes. As opposed to just about everything else in American life during this century, baseball has remained constant. Except for a few minor alterations (artificial turf, designated hitters), the game as it is played today is remarkably similar to the one played by Wee Willie Keeler and the old Baltimore Orioles: those long dead young men of the photographs, with their handlebar moustaches and heroic poses.
What happens today is merely a variation on what happened yesterday. Yesterday echoes today, and tomorrow will foreshadow what happens next year. Professional baseball’s past is intact. There is a record of every game played, a statistic for every hit, error, and base on balls. One can measure performances against each other, compare players and teams, speak of the dead as if they were still alive. To play the game as a child is simultaneously to imagine playing it as an adult, and the power of this fantasy is present in even the most casual pick-up game. How many hours of his boyhood, A. wonders, were spent trying to imitate Stan Musial’s batting stance (feet together, knees bent, back hunched over in a taut French curve) or the basket catches of Willie Mays? Reciprocally, for those who grow up to be professionals, there is an awareness that they are living out their childhood dreams–in effect, being paid to remain children. Nor should the depth of those dreams be minimized. In his own Jewish childhood, A. can remember confusing the last words of the Passover Seder, “Next year in Jerusalem,” with the ever-hopeful refrain of disappointed fantom, “Wait till next year,” as if the one were a commentary on the other: to win the pennant was to enter the promised land. Baseball had somehow become entangled in his mind with the religious experience.
It was just then, as A. was beginning to sink into this baseball quicksand, that Thurman Munson was killed. A. noted that Munson was the first Yankee captain since Lou Gehrig, that his grandmother had died of Lou Gehrig’s disease, and that his grandfather’s death would come quickly in the wake of Munson’s.
The newspapers were filled with articles about the catcher. A. had always admired Munson’s play on the field: the quick bat flicking singles to right, the stumpy body chugging around the bases, the anger that seemed to consume him as he went about his business behind the plate. Now A. was moved to learn of Munson’s work with children and the troubles he had had with his own hyperactive son. Everything seemed to be repeating itself. Reality was a Chinese box, an infinite series of containers within containers. For here again, in the most unlikely of places, the theme had reappeared: the curse of the absent father. It seemed that Munson himself was the only one who had the power to calm down the little boy. Whenever he was at home, the boy’s outbursts stopped, his frenzies abated. Munson was learning how to fly a plane so that he could go home more often during the baseball season to be with his son, and it was the plane that killed him.

Inevitably, A.’s memories of baseball were connected with his memories of his grandfather. It was his grandfather who had taken him to his first game, had talked to him about the old players, had shown him that baseball was as much about talk as it was about watching. As a little boy, A. would be dropped off at the office on Fifty-seventh Street, play around with the typewriters and adding machines until his grandfather was ready to leave, and then walk out with him for a leisurely stroll down Broadway. The ritual always included a few rounds of Pokerino in one of the amusement arcades, a quick lunch, and then the subway–to one of the city ball parks. Now, with his grandfather disappearing into death, they continued to talk about baseball. It was the one subject they could still come to as equals. Each time he visited the hospital, A. would buy a copy of the New York Post, and then sit by the old man’s bed, reading to him about the games of the day before. It was his last contact with the outside world, and his eyes closed. Anything else would have been too much.
Towards the very end, with a voice that could barely produce a sound, his grandfather told him that he had begun to remember his life. He had been dredging up the days of his Toronto boyhood, reliving events that had taken place as far back as eighty years ago: defending his younger brother against a gang of bullies, delivering bread on Friday afternoon to the Jewish families in the neighborhood, all the trivial, long-forgotten things that now, coming back to him as he lay immobilized in bed, took on the importance of spiritual illuminations. “Lying here gives me a chance to remember,” he told A., as if this were a new power he had discovered in himself. A. could sense the pleasure it gave him. Little by little, it had begun to dominate the fear that had been in his grandfather’s face these past weeks. Memory was the only thing keeping him alive, and it was as though he wanted to hold off death for as long as possible in order to go on remembering.
He knew, and yet he would not say he knew. Until the final week, he continued to talk about returning to his apartment, and not once was the word “death” mentioned. Even on the last day, he waited until the last possible moment to say good-bye. A. was leaving, walking through the door after a visit, when his grandfather called him back. Again, A. stood beside the bed. The old man took hold of his hand and squeezed as hard as he could. Then: a long, long moment. At last, A. bent down and kissed his grandfather’s face. Neither one of them said a word.

source

Abeille bibliophile Messages : 10518 Inscription le : 31/03/2010

(trop forte kenavo pour nous coller du base ball un peu partout !)

Sujet: Re: Au fil de nos lectures, in English please! Mar 6 Nov 2012 - 14:15

Thanks for the thread Kena Wink

Zen Littéraire Messages : 63288 Inscription le : 08/11/2007

shanidar a écrit:: (trop forte kenavo pour nous coller du base ball un peu partout !)

ah mais c'est tellement bôôôôôô

Epi a écrit:: Thanks for the thread Kena

you're welcome Very Happy

Sujet: Re: Au fil de nos lectures, in English please! Mar 6 Nov 2012 - 23:45

Toute petite contribution, mais c'est un début.
C'est un extrait du mariage du ciel et de l'enfer de William Blake (le seul livre bilingue que je possède)

The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.

Jamais l'aigle ne perdit plus de temps que lorsqu'il consentit à apprendre du corbeau.

Pas de relation de cause à effet, non non Very Happy

Sujet: Re: Au fil de nos lectures, in English please! Mar 6 Nov 2012 - 23:51

Ah...but I thought that it was the Perfumed People who were going to speak English on this thread?

Zen Littéraire Messages : 63288 Inscription le : 08/11/2007

coline a écrit:: Ah...but I thought that it was the Perfumed People who were going to speak English on this thread?

non, le pub n'est pas encore ouvert.. ici c'est pour des extraits en anglais Very Happy

Sujet: Re: Au fil de nos lectures, in English please! Mer 7 Nov 2012 - 12:39

Toujours William Blake:

Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.

Facile, pas besoin de traduire.

Zen Littéraire Messages : 63288 Inscription le : 08/11/2007

en vue d'une prochaine lecture de Darkanny Wink

“When Caroline Walker fell in love with Julian English she was a little tired of him. That was in the summer of 1926, one of the most unimportant years in the history of the United States, and the year in which Caroline Walker was sure her life had reached a pinnacle of uselessness.”

John O'Hara, Appointment in Samarra

Sujet: Re: Au fil de nos lectures, in English please! Mer 7 Nov 2012 - 15:55

J'ai tout compris !

Et il me tarde de commencer.

Sujet: Re: Au fil de nos lectures, in English please! Mer 7 Nov 2012 - 18:29

kenavo a écrit:

coline a écrit:: Ah...but I thought that it was the Perfumed People who were going to speak English on this thread?

non, le pub n'est pas encore ouvert.. ici c'est pour des extraits en anglais Very Happy

Ah ok...Je lis toujours trop vite... Very Happy

Sujet: Re: Au fil de nos lectures, in English please! Jeu 8 Nov 2012 - 12:16

Le petit William Blake du jour

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.

Si le fou persistait dans sa folie, il trouverait la sagesse.

Sujet: Re: Au fil de nos lectures, in English please! Jeu 8 Nov 2012 - 22:39

Je vais suivre vos contributions... et je risque de vous demander de l'aide assez souvent !

Sujet: Re: Au fil de nos lectures, in English please! Jeu 8 Nov 2012 - 23:14

Au fil de nos lectures, in English please! 97828413

IN THE WINTER, Billy Micklehurst used to say, when the nights were bitter and long and woke up before first light with your hair frozen fast to your collar, and when the hostels and dosshouses were crammed to the doors with the fallen - or when you just weren't in the mood for the company of the living - then Billy, in his raggedy suit and his laceless shoes and with his shoulders hunched against the wind, would make the long march from the nether world between Deansgate and the river, through the concrete bunkers of Hulme and the splendoured decay of Moss Side, and past all manner of things upon the way, until he found the sanctuary he craved in the great necropolis of Southern Cemetery.

Tim Willocks, La ballade de Billy Micklehurst

Traduction:

Spoiler:

Un petit air de "Suttree" de Cormac Mac Carthy pour cette brève nouvelle éditée en bilingue chez Allia. Je recommande cette lecture qui raconte l'errance d'un clochard alcoolique halluciné. On est à la frontière du réalisme et du fantastique, c'est très beau.

Sujet: Re: Au fil de nos lectures, in English please! Jeu 8 Nov 2012 - 23:20

je vais essayer d'y penser à celui là... thanks ? Shocked

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