Status Updates From Every Book Its Reader: The ...

A forma serena como os membros da seita (dos Assassinos, criada em 1090) consentiam em deixar-se massacrar levou a acreditar que eles estavam drogados com haxixe, o que deu origem à alcunha de haschischiyun ou haschaschin, palavra que será deformada em “Assassino” e não tardará a tornar-se em numerosas línguas um nome comum. A hipótese é plausível, mas em tudo referente à seita é difícil distinguir realidade e lenda.

« The Hebrew Bible is a book of puns, of irony, and the occasional joke, and these, while not the heart of the text, are like a set of stage directions : read the solemn part solemnly, but know also that almost every word can have a second or third meaning and that word-play is the analgesic we have been given to keep the heavy parts of the scriptures from becoming more of a load that we can bear . »

When Joyce wrote Finnegans Wake, he said, you know, I spent seventeen years writing this novel, and I expect somebody to spend an equivalent time reading it. Somebody who writes a novel cares about every sentence. But the only reader who ever reads a novel and looks ate every sentence, how it’s constructed and what it means and why it’s there, is the translator. Nobody ever reads as closely as a translator does.

One of the great mysteries of art is that the original somehow retains its freshness over decades and even over centuries, that we return to it and read it with great pleasure and great joy. Translations, by contrast, age very quickly. If you don’t have a new translation every twenty years, the translation is dated in a way that somehow the original text seems to be able to avoid.

«bibliophobia»: the many ways that people have expressed their fear of books over the centuries (…) in 213 BC, (...) the Chinese prime minister (...), Li Ssu, «set out to abolish the past and start history afresh» by ordering every book in the empire «except works of agriculture, medicine and divination» to be destroyed. «Those who refused (...) were branded and condemned to slavery on the Great Wall for four years»

Love his style; love the topic. He's got me hooked already. Even though some of the subject is a bit arcane, I don't care.

One of the great mysteries of art is that the original somehow retains its freshness over decades and even over centuries, that we return to it and read it with great pleasure and great joy. Translations, by contrast, age very quickly. If you don't have a new translation every 20 years, the translation is dated in a way that somehow the original text seems to be able to avoid. –Breon Mitchell

We are not only the product of what we read, we are in association with others who have read the same things. –David McCullough