WORK
“…I believe in the complexity of the human story and that there’s no way you can tell that story in one way and say, This is it. Always there will be someone who can tell it differently depending on where they are standing; the same person telling the story will tell it differently. I think of that masquerade in Igbo festivals that dances in the public arena. The Igbo people say, If you want to see it well, you must not stand in one place. The masquerade is moving through this big arena. Dancing. If you’re rooted to a spot, you miss a lot of the grace. So you keep moving…”
—Chinua Achebe
—from “Chinua Achebe, The Art of Fiction No. 139”
WORD(S)
contrectation /con-trek-TAY-shən/. noun. Generally: touching or handling, often specifically in the context of caressing and foreplay. Medically, as defined in Merriam-Webster, “the initial stage of the sexual act concerned with manual contact and tumescence.” Formerly the handling of legal affairs. From Latin tractāre (to handle, touch).
“One should here think of Moll’s assertion, who divides the sexual impulse into the impulses of contrectation and detumescence. Contrectation signifies a desire to touch the skin.” (Sigmund Freud, from Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex)
“Theft is the fraudulent contrectation of a thing for the sake of making a gain whether from the thing itself, from its use or from its possession.” (Peter Birks, from The Roman Law of Obligations)
“For every lyre requires these three things, apparatus, apt composition, and a certain musical contrectation.” (Thomas Taylor, from Iamblichus’ Life of Pythagoras)
WEB
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“The official dictionary of the Swedish language will introduce a gender-neutral pronoun in April […] ‘Hen’ will be added to ‘han’ (he) and ‘hon’ (she) as one of 13,000 new words…” → “Sweden adds gender-neutral pronoun to dictionary”
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Finally, the story behind OGG, PDX, SFO and other airport codes is told…a clever idea, well executed. → Airport Codes
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Mario M. Santamaría, creator of the Camera in the Mirror Project that found accidental selfies by the Google Art robot (sometimes eerily draped) that was trawling museums, strikes again, this time searching out the art that Google has blurred out due to copyright issues → Righted Museum
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I miss card catalogs. But I do enjoy seeing them transformed. → Card Catalog Art
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Today in 1958, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev is born. Krikalev’s career is notable because he may be the only person in history to leave our planet from a country that ceased to exist before he returned: during Kiralev’s 10-month stint on the space station Mir the Soviet Union was dissolved, becoming Russia, and his birthplace of Leningrad became St. Petersburg…events that were documented and juxtaposed in the fascinating, heavily 2001: A Space Odyssey inspired, film Out of the Present by Romanian filmmaker Andrei Ujica.
WATCH/WITNESS
One of my favorite paintings by Monet…one I just saw up close for the first time and which depicts a sunset that astronomers have determined took place at exactly Feb. 5, 1883 at 4:53 p.m..
“The Cliff, Étretat, Sunset” (Claude Monet)
[click for larger views and more info]
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
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Last August I wrote: “If you’ve read any classic Russian novels in English, you’ve probably read some of Constance Garnett’s translations. An interesting article on the history of Tolstoy in translation that centers on Garnett. As of 2005, the translation wars raged on. Hint: they still do, despite the incredible work of Pevear and Volokhonsky.” — Now, among other treasures, Reader C. shares a link to a discussion of the latter article, noting that the comments are interesting. And indeed they are…it appears my faith in the very-readable Pevear/Volokhonsky translations might be misplaced.
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Reader B. observes, w/r/t last issue’s WORD, “Certain texts would look subtly different if we replaced ‘decapitate’ with ‘decollate’.” — Which, for no good reason, makes me think of a possibly delightful coinage/abusage: décollatage.
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