Eep! It’s been a while since I’ve shown up in your inbox (and a first for new readers, welcome) And that when my biggest lesson from January was the power of simple presence and the magic of those who can foster that over Zoom. Other key ones were how showing up as you are, even messy, even halfway, is enough of enough and what it takes to maintain joy and consistency at once in a daily creative practice. Lessons taught but not yet learned and assimilated—got it. I do know, when it involves other people or my students, that the latter takes a long while.
Today, then, is an update-hodgepodge, and then next Monday we’ll get back to deeper dives. Another thing keeping me from writing for the past few weeks was the growing weight of things to talk about—so I’ll just fly by them here. All were powerful for me, and I’d love to connect over any of them!
Talking Translation
This is becoming, or again coming to be, my professional focus in both teaching and research. On the same day as the attack on the Capitol, I gave my first-ever (virtual) talk at the annual SCS (Society for Classical Studies) conference meeting, the national professional organization for classicists, or classicists-in-training, like me. My schtick is that we treat translation as a language-classroom tool in Latin and Greek, all the way up through graduate training, when we should, as Latinists and Hellenists, be engaging with the field of translation, comparative literature, and literary translation as a profession. The format was a Lightning Talk—6 minutes of me framing the issue followed by 14 minutes of discussion—which was a gratifying way to have a more exploratory exchange of ideas and collaborate more than I find usually happens in conference or academic spaces. I had a confusing evening afterwards, dancing to Sweet Honey in the Rock in celebration of my talk and processing the news of the day.
Doing Translation
This time I’ve been practicing what I preached at SCS, finishing up an English translation and commentary on, stay with me, the astronomer Johannes Kepler’s Latin translation, with copious footnotes, of the Ancient Greek philosopher Ptolemy’s work on the science of harmony. Whew. It was as meaty as it sounds, though not as technical. I had many moments of the sort I talked about at SCS—of intimacy with the text and the ideas therein, and especially of joyful a-has! when I at last understood the force of Kepler’s argument or proof and the translation fell into place. I truly believe that we translate not to understand, but after we have understood in the original language, when we translate most effectively and excellently. Otherwise we wind up treating the text as words to be rendered into other words, not as something composed by an author to transmit ideas and cause effects. I admit to translating without understanding sometimes—just to get through—but the highs come when I assume, from my own context, that the ancient author means one thing and work out that that wasn’t it at all given their world and being.
Reviving My Arts (and/as Scholarship)
Prospect Park preens in the morning, and other humans notice can’t help but notice too.
I used to be reallllly into arts. Poetry, page and performance, and storytelling, yes, but it went beyond the verbal ones. A short one-person show I wrote and performed at the National Black Theater in August 2016 a few weeks after having top surgery (my surgeon was incredulous but ultimately supportive...) Being typecast as the abused cross-dressing child in high school plays (I had the killer Alfred/Ophelia combo role in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead freshman year). The highlight of my theater tech career, building Audrey II for Little Shop of Horrors, and the disillusioned horror when we came in the day after to strike the set only to find the lovable plant already in pieces. More recently, an always-there-and-barely-speaking role as Der Butler in the Middlebury Deutsche Schule’s adaptation of Der Besuch der Alten Dame (nearly the opposite of my roles in real Corona-life).
I’ll save you the CV and instead proudly share two things I’ve been working on to revivify my relationship with arts in a more serious way:
There is now a photography page on my website which I will be adding to steadily, here
I moved recently and brought with me several English language poetry books, dear companions whom I haven’t had real commerce with for years in favor of other linguistics flings. I’m committed to writing the kind of criticism—appreciation, really—that poets write about poems, not the kind that (non-poet) academics do. Here’s my first attempt in that series, a short piece on Harryette Mullen’s stunning “Fancy Cortex” from her collection Sleeping With the Dictionary
There’s so much more to say! But, not all at once, I’m teaching myself.
For now, the non-English word of the week:
Der Schweinswal
Pig-whale?!?!
...That is, in German, the porpoise.
Of course.
Get in touch! I love the conversations I’ve had with so many of you through these dispatches. Just reply to this email, leave a comment on Substack, or DM me on Twitter @jacobusbanks.