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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for September 13, 2010

TT: Loving tongue

September 13, 2010 by ldemanski

Rio.jpegI just received in the mail two copies of Pops: A Vida de Louis Armstrong, the Brazilian edition of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, which was published last month by Larousse. The design of the book is essentially identical to that of the American edition, except that it’s in Portuguese. The translators are Andrea Gottlieb and Castro Neves, and I wish I could tell you that they did a fabulous job. Alas, I must confess to being humiliatingly ignorant of a language to which I have nonetheless spent countless hours listening. Would that my longstanding passion for the music of Antônio Carlos Jobim, João Gilberto, Sérgio Mendes, Luciana Souza, and Trio da Paz had miraculously caused me to learn Portuguese by osmosis, but the only word I know in that lovely, liquid tongue is, appropriately enough, saudade.
Even though I’ll have to leave it to my Brazilian friends to tell me whether Ms. Gottlieb and Mr. Neves got it right, I still managed to spend an exceedingly pleasant hour leafing through the Brazilian edition of Pops and marveling at how much cooler I seem to sound in Portuguese. My favorite passage from Pops, for instance, is the last paragraph:

Faced with the terrible realities of the time and place into which he had been born, he did not repine, but returned love for hatred and sought salvation in work. Therein lay the ultimate meaning of his epic journey from squalor to immortality: his sunlit, hopeful art, brought into being by the labor of a lifetime, spoke to all men in all conditions, and helped make them whole.

Here it is in Portuguese:

Confrontado pelas terríveis realidades do lugar e da época em que nasceu, ela não se afligiu, mas retribuiu ódio com amor e procurou a salvação no trabalho. É aí que está o resultado supremo da épica jornada que percorreu da esqualidez à imortalidade: sua arte, iluminada pelo sol, cheia de esperança, criada pelo trabalho de uma vida e capaz de tocar todos os homens de qualquer condição, e torná-los completos.

Doesn’t that just make you want to roll over and purr?
Rosie.jpegAs I flipped through the book, I ran across a number of additional footnotes that were credited to the translators. Notwithstanding my inability to speak Portuguese, I could see that their purpose was to explain to Brazilian readers the meanings of various untranslatable English-language expressions, including Uncle Tom, minstrel show, black-and-tan club, poboy, hepcat, and–this one is my favorite–The Jetsons:

Familio do desenho animado de mesmo nome da Hanna-Barbera, criado nos anos 1960 e ambientado no ano de 2062, no qual o futuro é descrito como um mundo de robôs, hologramas, carros voadores etc.

I suspect that these footnotes are in large part responsible for the other main difference between the two versions of Pops, which is that the Brazilian edition is thirty-six pages longer than the American edition.
I was fascinated, by the way, to read the following translation and explication of these lines from a song by Fats Waller and Andy Razaf: My only sin is in my skin/What did I do to be so black and blue? Take it away, colleagues:

Meu único pecado está na minha pele/O que fiz para ser tão negro e trist? [blue, em inglês, significa tanto a cor azul quanto tristeza].

Quanto tristeza, indeed!
* * *
Luciana Souza sings “Docemente” with the Fred Hersch Trio:

If an audiobook version of Pops should ever be published in Brazil, I’d like her to read it.

TT: Almanac

September 13, 2010 by ldemanski

“Well, here I went to Long Island Rail Road. It’s the first time I’ve done that, so I got to Penn Station really early, so I could ask directions. Some of the policemen recognized me, and I bought my senior ticket to Montauk for $11, off peak. I sat in the waiting room with a lot of people, and occasionally somebody recognized me. It’s lovely, and it’s very important to be respectful of it and accept it. Occasionally I have to be aware that there is also, in some people, a degree of resentment, as though I would think that I’m any different than anyone else. I’m not. I thrive on modesty and humility. I never said that I had perspective and judgment.”
Elliott Gould, interview, New York Times, Sept. 3, 2010

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

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About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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