Inner Brooding & Over-Refined Sensibility
This one's got a new episode about the philosophy of translation, a kick in the pants from Hegel re your New Year's irresolution, + a little art, an Instax-outtake, and more!
The Virtual Memories Show News
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This week, I posted Episode 620 of The Virtual Memories Show! Damion Searls & I kick off my 2025 season with a talk about his amazing new book, THE PHILOSOPHY OF TRANSLATION (Yale University Press). We talk about how all writing — translation or not — involves constraints, he balanced the book between philosophical argument and concrete examples of translation, and how he came to define translation as “reading one thing and writing something else.” We also get into where all the languages — German, Dutch, Norwegian, French — started for him (+ his lockdown project of teaching himself modern Greek), how the business of translation has changed during his career and the problems with the English market’s dominance, how a ‘book report’ led to him becoming the translator of Nobel-winner Jon Fosse, how he edited an abridged version of Thoreau’s (7000 pages of) journals, and why he only put one negative example in The Philosophy of Translation. Plus we discuss how he doesn’t look over his own translators’ shoulders, why he resents critics’ bias against translation and the notion of “a ‘faithful’ translation” or “getting it right,” the fetish Great Books programs have for The Original Text, how he & his peers fought for royalties over fee-for-service and the days when translators treated like typesetters, and plenty more. Give it a listen! And go read The Philosophy of Translation!
Last week, I posted Episode 619, a big ol’ year-in-review monologue! I get personal while talking about what I’ve learned from the podcast & my guests this year, how we continue to change each other’s lives, the moment I found my Spirit Jacket, my communion with a Roman sculpture, the validation of my year-long Instax-book project, the joy of hiking the Catskills with an old friend, my big work-anniversary, the thrilling circumstances of my debilitating neck injury, the best non-clinical moment one can have in an oncology setting, the new addition to the Virtual Memories family, my 2025 wants (NOT resolutions), and above all, the question of whether a person can really change (and okay, above that, the question of what ‘change’ means). Me being me, there are plenty of digressions & other topics over the course of ~50 minutes. Give it a listen!
Recent episodes: The Guest List • Benjamin Swett • Ken Krimstein • Eddie Campbell • Caitlin McGurk • Frances Jetter • Roland Allen
Inward Brooding & Over-Refined Sensibility
We’re a week into the New Year, so if you made a resolution to make something in 2025, here’s a reminder to get off your ass and do it:
I mean, the actual Hegel quote, which I've prattled on about before, is
A will which resolves on nothing is not an actual will; the characterless man can never resolve on anything. The reason [Grund] for such indecision may also lie in an over-refined sensibility which knows that, in determining something, it enters the realm of finitude, imposing a limit on itself and relinquishing infinity; yet it does not wish to renounce the totality which it intends. Such a disposition [Gemüt] is dead, even if its aspiration is to be beautiful. ‘Whoever aspires to great things,’ says Goethe, ‘must be able to limit himself.’ Only by making resolutions can the human being enter actuality, however painful the process may be; for inertia would rather not emerge from that inward brooding in which it reserves a universal possibility for itself. But possibility is not yet actuality. The will which is sure of itself does not therefore lose itself in what it determines.
—Hegel, Elements Of The Philosophy Of Right, §13, Addition
Not that I’m paralyzed by self-doubt in the face of writing my own darned book this year. I’m just . . . doing prep-work. Yeah, that’s it.
This week’s episode is all about translation, so I’ll note that the translator of that Hegel edition was H.B. Nisbet, who died in 2021. Curiously, I recently came across an upcoming new translation of one of my fave novels, The Leopard, by a Ralph Nisbet; I’m trying to find out if they’re related, and I’ve already pitched the publisher on my interest in recording with Ralph this spring. Sure would be something if his dad translated the passage that stabbed me in my uncommitted heart 3+ decades ago.
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Instaxery
It’s weird not to be taking & posting any Instax, especially after the mad dash I engaged in over the last 5-6 weeks to get to my goal of 78 images for the GUEST/HOST book. I’ve written drafts of a few text pieces to accompany pictures, but I need to work more devotedly on that, once I get my focus back from adjusting to New Dog Life and overcome any lingering inner brooding and over-refined sensibility, so’s I can enter the realm of finitude or actuality or something.
Maybe I’ll shoot other pix during the year, but for now I’m barely leaving the house, I’ve got the next 4 weeks of the show already recorded, and the 3 guests planned after that will be remote. It’s also cold af just now, so traipsing into the city to take pix isn’t a big priority for me.
Fine, here’s an outtake Instax from 2024; you’ll like the one I went with for the book instead:
Artistry
I’m still making a quick sketch every day with a rollerball pen in a cheap notebook, but that’s been it. Well, this morning, I did draw a quick postcard sketch of a deerlinquent and a tiger lily, below. You should go to the Flickr album of most of the art I’ve made & find something you like.
Postcardery
Let me know if you want to be on my postcard-a-day list. (Financial supporters of the podcast get a hand-drawn or painted postcard as a thank-you.)
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Sunday with links, books, & workout-craziness, and on Wednesday with a new episode, and maybe some art, but no more Instax (at least, not for the book project).
Something happened on the day he died / Spirit rose a meter and stepped aside,