Christopher > Recent Status Updates

This summer’s Prishtina bookshop trawl.

I picked this up because I mistakenly thought it was the source of the story-within-the-story in Rivette’s Celine et Julie vont en bateau (because it’s a James novel with a child and sinister intrigue). In fact, that turns out to have come from James’ The Other House, but I’m already too deep into this one to give up.

Finally reached the end of the first short story in this collection; still in the phase where I have to look most words up in the dictionary. But this late twentieth-century literary Erzya is basically word-by-word translation of Russian idiom, more than any other language I know in the Volga region. Fela’s “Colonial Mentality” always playing in my head as I read it.

Κρ. ὦ πρέσβυ, πάντες ὥστε τοξόται σκοποῦ / τοξεύετ’ ἀνδρὸς τοῦδε, κοὐδὲ μαντικῆς / ἄπρακτος ὑμῖν εἰμι.

Αν. ὦ γῆς Θήβης ἄστυ πατρῶιον / καὶ θεοὶ προγενεῖς, / ἀγουμαι δὴ ’γὼ κοὐκετι μέλλοω. / λεύσεττε, Θήβης οἱ κοιρανίδαι, / τὴν βασιλειδῶν μούνην λοιπήν, / οἷα πρὸς οἵων ἀνδρῶν πάσχω, / τὴν εὐσεβίαν σεβίσασα.

I enjoyed the first short story I read here, "Katundi me gjuhë të fshehtë" (and how could I resist that title?), a psychological tale or ghost story that vaguely reminded me of Carlos Fuentes' "Aura". But as Camaj wrote exclusively in the Geg dialect, which I can only tolerate in small doses, I think I'll set this collection aside for a while.