Customer Reviews

Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of The Music of Language

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Some people say it's not as good as GEB - but it really is. It's just different. Both of these two books - Hofstadter's best, along with Metamagical Themas - are controlled by some single vision, some idea that somehow managed to spark seven hundred or so pages of ideas.

GEB was more complex. The ideas were harder. Le Ton Beau de Marot is, at its core, a book about translation. The book was inspired by the author's attempts to translate a short (28 trisyllabic lines) poem by an obscure French Renaissance poet named Clement Marot. (You'll probably have the poem memorized by the end of the book, at least if you know French - and if you don't, it's conveniently included on a detachable bookmark on the inside back cover.) Hofstadter, after tackling this challenge himself, sent out a letter (reprinted in the book) to many friends challenging them to translate it as well, including a list of some formal constraints on the poem that he wanted to point out and two fairly literal glosses of the poem for the non-francophones in his circle. The book's structure (like all of DRH's other books) is one of alternation - small groups of translations of the poem, which originally were meant to constitute the whole book but now make up a sort of sideshow and can be skipped without detracting from the understanding of the book, alternate with chapters on various issues of translation. The poems don't play the role that you might expect, a role roughly analogous to that of the dialogues in GEB. In GEB, the dialogues were meant to introduce some point that would be developed in the chapter. Here, they're not.

Most of the book consists of discussions of some of the dilemmas of literary translation, with examples drawn from various literary works. Among Hofstadter's favorite examples is Alexander Pushkin's quintessential Russian novel in verse, Eugene Onegin. EO is written in several hundred "Onegin stanzas", essentially modified sonnets, but some translators don't do a great job of keeping this form. Hofstadter didn't know Russian at the time, but he exhibits various translations and shows their merits and flaws, and does a quite good job, at least to my inexperienced eye. (He has since learned Russian, and did his own translation of Eugene Onegin, which is currently for sale.)

Poetic translation, of course, is the soul of this book, and Hofstadter subscribes to the school of translation believing that the medium and the message are equally important. He thus spends a chapter talking about Dante's Divine Comedy. One of the important things about the Divine Comedy is that it is written in a form known as terza rima - three line stanzas, rhyming ABA, BCB, CDC, DED, and so on - which contributes greatly to the interest of the poem. Many translators ignore this, for reasons of "scholarly purity" or something equally pompous - but Hofstadter convinces us that that can't be done.

Again, dealing with the issue of form, I note the large number of constraints that Hofstadter placed on himself in the writing of this book. He claims to have spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about the typesetting and such things; thus, none of the poems within chapters, for example, are broken across page boundaries. (There are literally hundreds of poetic examples - so don't say that this is just a coincidence.) Hofstadter also seems to like lipogrammatic writing (that is, writing without a certain letter, usually the letter "e"), and even translated Searle's Chinese Room anecdote into "Anglo-Saxon" (that is, "e"-less English). This raises an interesting question - why is it that translating from, say, English to French is totally acceptable, while translating from British English to American English (or vice versa) is sacrilege?

In conclusion, an excellent look at the issues involved in translation. Of course, this being Hofstadter, there is some talk about AI and machine translation - but that isn't the core of the book. Much more literary than you might expect - but Hofstadter is polymathic enough that that's not a problem. Don't let the size put you off - it will go quickly. Maybe too quickly - but don't all the best?

Dearest Doug,
Please don't bug
Us with rhyme
One more time.
Reading through
Sev'nty-two
Poems built on
"Ma Mignonne"
Is real tough.
Nuff's enough!
And no line
For Will Quine
When you ask
If the task
To create
A translate
Can be done?
It's no fun,
Also rude,
To conclude
Douglas Hof-
Stadter's off
Of his game.
All the same,
We can see
G-E-B
This is not.
Thanks a lot!

Hofstadter is a very clever guy, with an ear for wordplay and some interesting things to say about the concept of translation. But he could use an editor and he has a number of blind spots as a thinker and as a literary judge.

Much of what is most intriguing about the book is its strong individuality. H. knows what he wants to say, he knows how he wants to say it, he has intensely precise ideas of how the book should look. For example, it matters painfully to him that the pages come out just so, with just the right number of lines so that every word comes out on the right place on its page. He takes this to extremes -- when he can't get permission to quote from Catcher in the Rye, he is forced to improvise a passage of EXACTLY the same length in order to keep everything perfect.

Incidentally, it's sort of surprising, given his feelings about the importance of all these details of presentation, that he can't understand Nabokov's insistence that translators, by paraphrasing and padding lines, inevitably alter dramatically the effects of the originals. H. would find his own book unacceptably altered if a linebreak was wrong, but he refuses to accept that someone might find something essential lacking when Pushkin's stanzas are rendered into English approximations.

I'll confess to being somewhat biased in favor of Nabokov -- and I can't help but wonder if Hofstadter has ever read Pale Fire.
[in several places, H. plays upon the titles of Nabokov's works, but not in a way that gives any sense that he has read anything other than his essays on translation and his literal translation of Eugene Onegin]

Anyway, back to *this* book -- it's a very personal book in content, too, the details of Hofstadter's life intertwine with the poem, all the translations, and the commentaries. At times, it's quite moving -- the illess of H.'s wife and his sense of loss come through almost everywhere, even when he seems to be discussing something completely unrelated; even the most playful parts of the book seem to have a slighly sad twinge.

On the other hand, many of his reminiscences of his college days, or clever things someone came up with at a dinner party in Italy [something like that, I don't remember all the details any more] don't work for me.

And I really don't like the way H. so often dismisses those he disagrees with in pretty, well, dismissive terms. If H. doesn't understand a psychologist, it's because he's speaking psychobabble or pseudo-intellectual fakery (maybe he is, of course; but I need more than H.'s word to believe it); if a modern poet tries to translate Dante without rhyme, or with only 37 stanzas in a canto instead of 45, H. is stunned and contemptuous. (Incidentally, it often seems to me that some of the mechanical details of a poem matter more to H. than the language and imagery it contains.)

And, of course, he hits poor, dead Nabokov so hard you might think that he wasn't actually one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century as well as someone deeply aware of the issues of literary creativity in multiple languages and the problems of literary translation. To H., it's not enough that N. be wrong, he must be "jealous", full of "bitter bluster", and, finally,
"pathetic".

I don't mean all this to be as negative as it sounds -- there *is* a lot to like in this book, and I'm very glad I read it. The series of translations of the Marot poem are charming and varied, though only a few of them sustain anything like the tone of the original (as I dimly sense it) throughout.

Autobiographical in scope and introspective in method, the usual pack of Hofstadterisms (Bognard problems; "slippability"; typefaces; creativity arising from constraint; the term "you guys") re-assembled in a low-density format. What should be relatively quick discussions are endlessly expanded into paragraph-after-paragraph dissertations that left me thinking "OK, I get it already." I found myself skimming paragraphs, and then pages, looking for the action.

At times I felt like I was reading "The Making of Godel, Escher, Bach" as the author describes for us how he saved the various translation efforts of his magnum opus from the clutches of incompetent translators. His impatience with those of lesser genius contrasts with the nice-guy persona he's trying hard to project.

The book is mostly about translation, using a simple poem, which was translated in several different ways by the author and his friends and colleagues to illustrate many important and interesting points. After awhile, though, I started to get tired of reading about what is wrong with everyone else's translations, and how no one gets it in quite the same way that Dr. Hofstadter does. In addition, the author's own poems are among the least interesting of the collection, and he repeatedly "corrects" translations of other contributors (even his mom!), producing results that are usually awful.

If you've read his previous work, you're not going to find a lot new here, and you might be disappointed at how flat this seems.

I strongly suspect that those who didn't read this work (I will not presume to call it a mere "book") missed the point entirely. The stories about his wife, Searle, Nabokov, et.al., were not meandering digressions; they were *examples* of how the many themes of translation, poetry, analogy, self-reference, etcetera, were woven into their lives.

I received this book for my graduation from high school (begged for it, in fact), devoured it in two days, and have re-read it constantly since. When I lent it to a lover of mine who was from Toronto, and with whom I later broke up, the first thing on my mind when we arranged to meet some months later was, "Can I have my book back?" I re-read it immediately.

Poetry translation is now one of my most enjoyable hobbies, and I would have to say that this book gave me the impetus in that direction. I would frankly have to class Le Ton beau de Marot as the book of Hofstadter's which I have most thoroughly enjoyed - more than GEB, more even than Metamagical Themas. Please read it.

...I found this book infuriatingly in need of an editor!!! I bought a remaindered copy for $4 at Half-Price Books, but after reading it I realized I didn't get much of a bargain.

Doug starts out by praising himself for being in total control of this book -- typesetting, page design, content, direction... Well, he shouldn't be so smug. The typography is a jumbled mess, the chapter introductions are amateurish, the page breaks are artificial and distracting, the content wanders off the subject into numerous, endless (and pointless) digressions, and most of the 30,000 versions of the poem he translates are laughably bad.

There's a worthwhile message in here somewhere, buried under six tons of authorial effluvia -- something about the art of translation being a balance between form and content. But of the 632 pages here, only about 120 serve this purpose. Hofstadter has apparently become such a powerhouse author that he is allowed to wield total control, but it's a two edged sword and he proves himself no Galahad.

Doug man, you need an editor.

I have seldom been more astonished in my life than in reading the obviously heartfelt but shockingly shortsighted criticisms levied by fellow Amazon.com readers. To myself it appears (pardon the pun) self evident that this is one of the greatest books currently in print. At this time yesterday I was only halfway through the book, and I had to (HAD TO, mark) stay up all night to finish it, ignoring my roommates, not returning phone calls, and seriously threatening my work this morning. Since this is not the sort of book one usually thinks of as an "up-all-nighter" I must explain what it was that compelled me to lose so much sleep. Simple. It's that good.

Le Ton Beau works on every imaginable level.

1) It works as a very moving piece of autobiography, not only focused on the author's tragic loss of his wife (though, I confess, I cried when he wrote after praising her own transcendent translation of the central poem, "But then I'm biased. I loved her so and still, still I do." (Apologies to the author for quoting from memory and therefore surely inaccurately))but also reflecting movingly on his love affair with Chopin, the French language, puzzles and word games, the human mind and, frankly, LIFE in all it's intricate mysteries. This is a man who, in spite of it all, has a passionate love for the world at large and the book would suffice in that alone if nothing else but,

2) It works as a work of art, it is a masterpiece of self referential, carefully constructed perfection. Just as a translator has to stick carefully to the text of the poem, and just as Marot in writing his poem had to stick to the three syllable per line, AABB rhyme scheme (and seven other restrictions that Hofstadter points out) Hofstadter gives himself literally hundreds of restraints ranging from the macro level (finishing the, enormous, book in one year in time for Marot's 500th birthday) to the mid-level (writing a chapter entirely in rhyme) to the micro level (translating long paragraphs into e-less English).

3) As a roster of great works. I found that one of the more surprising aspects of this book was how I kept reaching for pen and paper to write down things that I now will have to go look up for myself. The short list is a) I must read Eugene Onegrin b) and The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth. c) I will have to give another listen to Gershwin, d) and give Chopin a chance, e) and finally get around to reading Dante, f) and rent The Seven Year Itch. And that's only the beginning. I realize that this is a personal response, and not the most intellectual argument I could make for the book, but I so seldom come away from a book this fired up with enthusiasm to learn still more- and after a dose of knowledge this heavy I would usually feel overwhelmed if it were not for the incredibly light, loving hand of the author who steered me (not, unlike him, a physicist, or an AI expert, or a speaker of any foreign languages (though now I feel compelled to restart my abortive attempts at German and French))gently through such dangerous territory.

4) It works as a brilliant and (yes, to those of you who complained of it) exhaustive, lengthy treatise on language. Perhaps if it did not inspire you, you are simply not inspired by language. For myself, however, I was litera(ri)lly out of breath on several occassions. Although densely written, there is an overwhelming sense of fun here (as in the author's rather charming ire when he is unable to reproduce a section from The Catcher in the Rye, and his lengthy discussion of the German word for nipple), but the sense of fun is deadly serious as well, because it is such an essential element of language. Nothing is trivial in linguistics. One reviewer was upset that the author discussed typefaces, and typesetting as if this were somehow irrelevant in a book ABOUT POETRY. When, in fact typesetting and type face are often the only things that define poetry as such. If you don't believe me, look and see:

If you don't

Believe me,

Look- and see!

Still you won't?

Well ok, this is perhaps a slightly inane example, but what I'm trying to say here is that Hofstadter's point encompasses the entire range of human experience as it is capable of being expressed through ANY SYMBOLIC METHOD, with a particular emphasis on the linguistic method. Given that most of us live and die in the universe of symbols, I fail to comprehend the complaint that Hofstadter has, by any means, "Run out of things to say." To the contrary, the impression I get is that he is holding himself back in an attempt(perhaps unsuccessfully for some of you) to not run us over with the power of his enthusiasm, genius, and sheer, massive, overwhelming knowledge.

This may be the best book I have ever read. And the best part is I know I missed at least 30% of it the first time, so I will have the pleasure of picking it up again and getting 30% more ("for the price of one!") out of it. Maybe that's what I'll do tonight.

The book is a full meal of issues concerning translation (inthe broadest sense of the word), creativity, analogues, metaphores anda host of related subjects. The treatment is reminiscent of the loosely conversational style that can be found in Metamagical Themas, or, to a lesser degree, in GEB. Given the fact that a large terrain is covered, certain elements are bound to be treated less than fully. What is disappointing for me however is that even central elements are sometimes treated a cursory way, leaving the reader pretty much where she started. As an example, take the translation of a Villon poem by W.E. Henley. Hofstadter elaborately shows that nineteenth century english slang is hard to penetrate. But instead of turning to the obvious place where enlightment is to be found, namely Farmer & Henley's seminal dictionary of slang (or a similar work by Eric Partridge), he peruses the SOED! He even builds up a facetious argument why he does not use the OED itself, the obvious alternative. Another flaw in my opinion is the use of typography. He makes a point of stressing the importance of the appearence of the book, and I must say it does not agree with me. The main text is displayed in a strange, but altogether nice way, namely with larger than normal letters, showing not a lot of margin. But why is the commenatry on the poetic translations suddenly printed in *smaller* than normal letters? Entire pages look like legalistic "this is fit to skip" print. It is not as though only the fine print is Hofstadter's commentary, since the entire book pervades a very private commentary on translations etc. The privateness of the book can also be a bit oppressive in places. I am not particularly interested in the food people eat or the landscapes they admire, especially since I find that it interferes with the main argument of the book, which I took to be a tour of what Hofstadter has encountered in his dealings with language, thought and other patterns. Having said all that, the conclusion must be that the overall result is a readable and highly entertaining book, marred by the aforementioned flaws.

I consider myself a devotee of Douglas Hofstadter's earliestwork. Perhaps Godel, Escher, Bach was so novel and entertaining thatit artificially raised my expectations for his subsequent output. But I think it more likely that H. has run out of things to say. This book, which he trumpets as his intellectual high point, disappoints by rehashing countless themes from earlier works, such as typefaces, analogies and slippages, anagrams and palindromes.
The problem throughout is that, with topics such as the above, H. becomes trapped in the analysis of form, rather than content. Although I expected not to, I ended the book firmly on the side of the same-saying NYT reviewer. H. engages in a sleight-of-hand, taking poetic minatures excessively concerned with rhyme, meter, and tone, making a good case for their translation according to those principles, and then trying to generalize this claim to much more intricate works. (Admittedly, he tries to extend his ideas to Eugene Onegin and Dante's Inferno, but only partly succeeds with the former.)
The worst part of the book is his strident and self-righteous tone. Could GEB's explorer of ideas have turned into a dogmatic professor? He takes Nabokov to task for a literary hatchet job, and then takes his own axe--to Nabokov, to translators of Dante, to all music written after 1950, to Dylan Thomas, to users of vaguely sexist language...
Curiously, this book refers to more as-yet-unread-by-the-author books than I've ever seen listed before. Those admissions, and some other bizarre omissions, give the whole book the flavor of a rush job. I found it ultimately unsatisfying.

Unfortunately Godel, Escher, Bach has set the author an impossible gold standard to achieve. While this book contains some new ideas, it is overly repetitive and at times self-indulgent. I fear most readers will find it falls short of their (high) expectations if they have read GEB. Perhaps if you have not read Hofstadter, better to start with this & then read GEB...