New Life

I'm afraid the butterfly is not alive now. Unfortunately before it was released into the outside world. But then it couldn't fly so we don't know what would have happened to it out there...

But look what has appeared on the tree next to the butterfly's place! A new shoot! So life is always appearing, even when you think it is disappearing.

Real People

It's hard to imagine old black-and-white people as real colour people. All the old people - Busoni, Liszt, Rachmaninov, Alkan, Chopin and company - they were all colour people.

And then it's hard to hear old recordings as real performances ("colour"). I hear Rachmaninov tearing away at 300 mph in his 3rd Concerto and wonder what he really sounded like.

I'm sure we can get closer to imagining what it was all really like.

They were people, like all the people you see today. Not monochrome prints.

Something must be done to invite them to step out of the page...

Still Going

You can see: the left wing is a bit damaged. Two-spot markings. Nice yellowy colour. Proboscis - curly bit at the mouth end with which butterflies drink nectar out of plants.

Our friend is still going well in the safety of its home-made butterfly house. It can't fly well so I try to keep it out of trouble for the moment. It sleeps at night and wakes up in the day. It likes warmth from about 25°C, but becomes immobile if the temperature drops below 20 or so. It can still move if necessary in a cold temperature - I know this because when I first found it inside the fridge it could flutter and display its defensive "eye" markings on its wings. Anything with big eyes like that - you'd better keep away! It worked on me the first time.

I'm feeding it on a solution of honey and sugar in water. It is fed this on a chopstick. Since today I have a bit of tissue on the end which can soak up the solution. It would be nice to give it something to drink out of (like a flower) so it can use its proboscis properly.

Ideally this butterfly will get better and start flying properly, then the weather will get warm so I can release it into a lovely garden somewhere near. I try to give it some quality of life but it is designed to live outside, even if it is more dangerous out there.

I will see how it is looking.

How to Cook Chicken

OK here's a cookery tip for you.

Chicken (if you eat it) is one of the most difficult things to cook because it easily gets into an upsettingly dry, tough, squeaky condition which nobody wants but many people don't know how to avoid.

Here is the secret.

OK assuming you have cut it into small pieces, and you are frying it in a frying pan, all you have to do is: leave it. Yes, you read me correctly. Do nothing!

The side of the chicken pieces that is in contact with the pan is the side that is cooking. Turning it over now will make it cook faster (two hot sides). If you have other ingredients to add, and often there are lots of things to add and not enough time, then you don't want the chicken to be cooked before you start the other bits. No you don't, because the chicken will be over-cooked then. So just leave it in its initial position. THEN, when everything is cooked right, and the plates are ready, etc, then and only then should you turn it over. This way, it will be ready when you want to eat it and not before.

Remember that hot food continues to cook while it's on the plate. So stop cooking the chicken just before it looks ready. This means, if you cut a piece or split one with the cooking implement, it should be, well, not exactly pink in the middle, but certainly not quite white yet ("cooked chicken colour"). Yes, stop BEFORE it is ready. Stop when it is NEARLY ready.

So when it is on the plate in front of your guest or customer (or you) it will be the right colour inside. Because it is hot, and is still cooking itself as you watch!

Does that make sense?

To summarise:
1. in the pan, leave the top side of the chicken raw until you are ready to go.
2. turn it over to complete the cooking but stop just before it is cooked all the way through.

Now please tell me it worked.

Translation

There's a famous line in Baudelaire that goes:

Les soirs illuminés par l'ardeur du charbon

(First line, verse two, "The Balcony")

Actually I thought it was from Proust, and now you can imagine how glad I am that I checked!

Anyway, this line is a sort of famous example of how some things are difficult to translate. Those of you who do not know French, or who think you're probably fairly fluent but actually you're being rather optimistic about that (like me), will already have translated it as:

The evenings illuminated by the ardour of carbon

Which is of course the only sensible translation. These people who pettifogg over unnecessarily precise details may prefer a different rendering but that's not us, eh? We appreciate the broad strokes of our intuitive understanding of the French tongue. Unfortunately that's not how the French would see it, so we have to actually find out what the words mean rather than guessing.

Here are some examples:

The evenings aglow with the heat of the coals (Elaine Marks, 1962)
Evenings illuminated by the glowing coal (Francis Scarfe, 1961)
In those evenings lit by the glowing coal (Francis Scarfe, 1986)
The nights ignited by the fire’s fierce fashions (Arthur Symons, c.1900-1920)
The eves illumined by the burning coal (Frank Pearce Sturm, 1906)
long hours illumined by the glowing fire (Lewis Piaget Shanks, 1931)
The evenings lighted by the hushed flame of the coal (George Dillon, 1936)
On eves illumined by the light of coal (Roy Campbell, 1952)
The evenings lighted by the glow of the coals (William Aggeler, 1954)
Evenings illumined by the glow of coals afire (Jacques LeClercq, 1958)
Evenings lighted by the burning of the coals (Wallace Fowlie, 1963)
On evenings by the ardor of the hearth illumned (Richard L. Tierney, 1981)
Evenings illustrated by living coals (Richard Howard, 1982, no relation)
Those evenings lighted by the lustrous coal-fire’s heat (William H, Crosby, 1991)
Evenings illumined by the ardour of the coal (James McGowan, 1993)
Evenings illuminated by the heat of a coal fire (Cat Nilan, 1999)
On evenings lit by the glowing coal-fire (Peter Low, 2001)
Those evenings lit by the glow of the coals (Rosemary Lloyd, 2002)
On evenings lit by the glow of the ashes (A. S. Kline, 2004)
evenings lit by burning charcoal (Keith Waldrop, 2006)
Evenings bathed in crackling firelight (Ira Lightman, 2007)

(If you want to read more from those translations, look here which is where I found them anyway)

Well there's a few possibilities. One was almost the same as my first attempt, wasn't it! And this is from professionals...

Interesting to see someone struck on an alternative meaning of "illuminated" ("illustrated", like an illuminated manuscript). I don't know if the word has those senses in French and English, though, so I can't make any judgement about its suitability.

So now we know it's hard to translate. But actually everything is hard to translate - unless you're a good translator. Then it is still hard but it looks easy. Remember Samuel Beckett translated Finnegans Wake into French! So anything is possible...

Aha look, you can hear James Joyce reading an excerpt himself with his own good voice hear!

Somehow it seems the best translations give you the feeling of the original, though they may not give the most literal exchange of meanings. The best line is the one that makes you feel the...er...ardour of carbon, as you are reading it.
Perhaps a sense of the social and historical position of the language of the original is possible, too. Cor Blimey, Strike a Light, Guv, that may be adding too many difficulties sometimes.

So something has to come across. Across the page, between the two languages, across the years to today, someone has to make a bridge between the original and the listener or reader. Well, isn't that rather like being an interpreter of music?

To hear a performance by Sviatoslav Richter or Glenn Gould, to take two strong examples, is in some people's eyes to hear a powerful personality imposing itself on the original. Or to hear a partial, or even eccentric, view. But that is not how I see it (or hear it).

Richter is a powerful personality, but what is powerful is the extent to which he's prepared to go to bring you the original. It's instantly recognisable as him, yet it is also instantly recognisable as the "right" music. (That's not to suggest that there's one right way, but if it can sound right or wrong, then I'm calling it right)

Gould is the same. Sadly too many writers describe him as eccentric, perhaps nearly all of them (I am at least one exception), and it makes it very difficult to hear what he's actually doing. I am a Gould sympathiser and I am still surprised when I listen and suddenly realise it's not eccentric. It is always Glenn, Glenn, Glenn, but Glenn likes the music, you see so it's not the same Glenn as if we were hearing some...other...player. (Still trying not to complain about others - they have a right to make a living too! Though they don't always have the right to do it the way that they do, in my view.)

How I imagine playing music is like this. I want to be the composer. I am trying to bring you the music as the composer thought of it - as far as I can understand that. But what is particular about my understanding of how one does this is that I see myself as representing the composer if he were alive today.

That means that things can be different sometimes. Also I do have free will so my "creative commune" can come up with a change in the performance, as, of course, many good players did anyway. Details can change, even the whole idea of the piece. They say Chopin never played the same way twice. It brought tears to the eyes of his pupils - first because of its beauty, second because as they tried to repeat the results it had already changed! How frustrating it must have been. But that was the way it was. And I guess that's the way it is for me, too. Things just can't be the same twice! Even if I tried.

I can't translate
Les soirs illuminés par l'ardeur du charbon
Et les soirs au balcon, voilés de vapeurs roses.
Que ton sein m’était doux! que ton coeur m’était bon!
Nous avons dit souvent d’impérissables choses
Les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon.
Not today, anyway.

But I have other news from far away and long ago that I have to pass along to you. So that is what I will do, as best I can.