A Translation

One day I'll find the time to read Kierkegaard again, I hope, and to try my hand at translating him. Here are two sentences from The Sickness unto Death:

Den socratiske Definition hjælper sig da saaledes. Naar En ikke gjør det Rette, saa har han heller ikke forstaaet det; hans Forstaaen er en Indbildning; hans Forsikkring om at have forstaaet en feil Direction; hans gjentagne Forsikkring om Fanden gale ham at have forstaaet, en uhyre, uhyre Fjernhed ad den størst mulige Omvei.

Here's the official (Penguin) English translation by Alistair Hannay:

The Socratic definition covers itself as follows. When a person does not do the right thing, then neither has he understood; his understanding is an illusion; his protestation of understanding is a misleading message, his repeated protestations that he'll be damned if he doesn't understand, a huge, huge distance away on the greatest possible detour.

It comes off a bit like a Dane's attempt translate his own writing. Here's what I'd do with it:

The Socratic definition offers itself as follows. When someone fails to do the right thing, then neither has he understood it; his understanding is a delusion, his assurances that he's understood, a diversion, his repeated assurances that you better damned well believe he's understood, a monstrous, monstrous distraction by way of the greatest possible detour.

Not bad, if I do say so myself. I'll update this post with some notes later.

A Humble Ambition

I want to do for for thought what Joseph Albers did for colour.

The Conjunctions of War

The grammar is always impeccable in the New Yorker. It tells us how one thinks. Consider an illuminating sentence from William Finnegan's article on the Mexican drug cartels.

Mexico's President, Felipe Calderón declared war—his metaphor—on the country's drug traffickers when he took office, in December, 2006. ... [His] first act was to send sixty-five hundred soldiers and federal police into Michoacán. ... Fifty thousand soldiers and twenty thousand federal police are now in the streets and countryside, but the bloodshed and disorder have grown worse. (39)

It is the "but" in that last sentence that interests me. The unstated understanding between the implicit author and his implicit reader is that a surge of troops into a region will normally reduce "bloodshed and disorder"; "but" normally sets up a contrast of some sort. Consider the alternative:

Fifty thousand soldiers and twenty thousand federal police are now in the streets and countryside, and the bloodshed and disorder have grown worse.

We can easily imagine the same grammatical issue in coverage of the War on Terror.

One hundred and fifty thousand soldiers are now in Afghanistan, but the bloodshed and disorder have grown worse.

The always implicit axiom is that it is puzzling that declaring war on something increases rather than decreases the bloodshed related to it. The grammar of empire requires that "but" (which, not incidentally, indicates "exception"—as in "state of exception"). A shift in usage to favour "and" would be in the interest of peace.