In a recent essay in the New York Review of Books, Larry McMurtry wonders whether reversal of fortune can be a spur to rereading. He says, "Where once one had read for adventure, now one rereads for the safety of the unvarying text." Every year, I make it a point to re-read one book from my youth.
In trying to re-experience books I read when I was young, I can't help but wonder:.Have I changed? Has the book changed?
I only started doing this after joining the first bookclub of my life. Taking a dislike to many of the contemporary novels written by women that we read, I questioned whether I even liked "women's literature." I started remembering my love of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West; also Rumer Godden and Penelope Fitzgerald... this was a very exciting remembrance for me since the previous two and a half decades had seen me reading mainly Japanese literature and Chinese histories.
It's strange how this pandemic has me longing for my past--in just the way McMurtry suggests. So far, I've re-read Death of Venice as well as the Buddha of Infinite Light.
Death in Venice was particularly interesting to re-read since not only had I changed, but so had the book!
Yes, there is a new translation!
As Michael Cunningham says in the introduction to the new translation, All novels are translations, even in their original languages. Reading is always an act of both interpretation and translation. He says:
For a handful of the greatest writers, Thomas Mann among them, the process of translation continues even further. Occasionally a book like Death in Venice speaks so enduringly to readers that it is translated not once but again, and sometimes again and again. This is as it should be. It respects the fundamental nature of literature as a mutable and ever-unresolved business involving writers’ and readers’ ongoing attempts to get to the heart of the matter, to complete that which can never be completed. A great book is probably, by definition, too complex and layered, too intricately alive, to be translated once and for all.
I was really bowled over by the new translation and I completely agree with Cunningham that it presents the case of Aschenbach in a far more sympathetic light. The old penguin version focused on the decay... I hate to bring up the worst book I ever read, Dyer's Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi [Spit, Spit], but Dyer could only have written his book based on the old translation which over-focused on how the pursuit of beauty leads to corruption.. rot and death. Hence Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi.
In the old days (aka when I was young), the world was really anti-beauty. It was thought of as something superficial. So, I think the slant of the translation was inevitable. This had been on my mind after reading Dyer's book [Spit, Spit]. I wondered if the German was quite that hard on Aschenbach. Well, lo and behold, this new translation shows that some adjustments really did need to be made.
As Cunningham says: This Aschenbach felt larger, and at least a little bit more profound. This Mann seemed to say, via Aschenbach, that if the alternative is to age gracefully, to gray and wither quietly, untroubled by absurd or perverse passions—if the other option is to shuffle offstage without attracting undue notice—it might in fact be better to do ourselves up like dandies, to discard our precious dignity, to worship what we know we cannot have right up until the moment of our demise.
Wonderful experience reading the new translation and hats off to Cunningham for writing that fabulous introduction!
The Buddha of Infinite Light was also a flash from the past.
Re-read after thirty years!
This was one of the first books I read when I arrived in Japan thirty years ago. I had a beautiful copy of the book published by Shambhala that I had bought in Berkeley and brought with me in my suitcase. Maybe it's the same now-- but back then most Americans thought that Japan was the land of Zen Buddhists. I know there are Zen believers there, but I met very few. Like my husband, the majority of Buddhists I met were shin Buddhists. The most popular form being Pure Land. That is maybe why I always think of Pure Land Buddhism when I think of Japanese Buddhism--and this book is a wonderful introduction to the subject.
It was originally given as a series of talks in the 1950s and so is very easy to follow and he makes a lot of interesting comparisons to Christianity that are illuminating (at least they were to me way back then).
Like many people, I associate Suzuki with the negative baggage of nationalism. I also think of him as a teacher of Zen to westerners. But then there is this book, and re-reading it, I have to say I think it does a great job--maybe the best I've ever read?-- of distinguishing between jiriki (自力, one's own strength) versus tariki (他力 meaning "other power", "outside help") are two terms in Japanese Buddhist schools that classify how one becomes spiritually enlightened. Jiriki is commonly practiced in Zen Buddhism. In Pure Land Buddhism, tariki often refers to the power of Amitābha Buddha.
He also explains the concept of faith in Buddhism very well.. and I have to take my hat off to him since I don't believe he was a practitioner, being trained in Zen.
Somehow re-reading is one of the best forms of remembering, not just who we were but how we tended to think about things... it illuminates an approach to life, youthful predilections... dreams..? It is different from the Book to take to a desert island... for me that is definitely the Quixote. And perhaps Karamazov. Now that is a book I want to re-read...
Favorite novel of 2015: Relic Master
Favorite Novel of 2016: Laurus
Favorite novel of 2017: Galileo's Dream
Other Favorite novel of 2017: Carrere's The Kingdom
More on communal activities: Heaven and Hell in Modena