Call of the Siren exclusive: Andrew Frisardi's response

It isn't criticism that irritates--we're all adults here, right?--but what does is criticism that misinterprets and, in the process, misleads potential readers. frisardi-dante-coverWhen poet and translator Andrew Frisardi was on the receiving-end of such treatment for his translation of Vita Nova (Northwestern University Press) in the pages of the Times Literary Supplement, he did what anyone would do. He wrote to the editors to set the record straight.

They haven't printed his reply, but he's graciously passed it along to Call of the Siren. Frisardi's reply already appears in the comments thread of the post "Some painful reading," but it also deserves special attention here. Why?  Because I think it's a model example of how to respond if you're ever caught in a similar situation.

Frisardi could very well have let his temper flare, but instead he offers a measured response that's very much in the spirit of other TLS letters (so I can't understand why the editors haven't printed it) and that covers a lot of terrain in a short amount of space:

Sir,

I agree with Adam Elgar’s disagreement with Paul Howard’s review of Anthony Mortimer’s and my editions of Dante’s ‘Vita Nova’. The review was off the mark in a number of ways, not least of which was his characterization of contractions such as ‘don’t’ as ‘modern’. Has Mr Howard read Shakespeare or Donne (who don’t hesitate to use ‘em)? Are the Elizabethans ‘modern’? Has he read Dante? Is he familiar with the very frequent speech-register Florentine diction—including contractions—even in the early poems? As for ‘cool’, the 1828 edition of ‘Webster’s’ says it means ‘manifesting coldness or dislike; chilling; apathetic; as, a cool manner’—a meaning still current, certainly an apt one for the context in the poem he cites, and hardly ‘modern’ or ‘politically correct’. Mr Howard criticizes the choice of adjectives in my translation of ‘Tanto gentile’, too, as being intrusively or self-consciously modern. I have the poem describing Beatrice as ‘open’ and ‘self-possessed’, which actually (as I explain fully in the notes section of the book) are truthful interpretations of the untranslatable words ‘gentile’ and ‘onesta’. Anthony Mortimer gives ‘gentle’ and ‘noble’ for the same words, thus ignoring altogether ‘onesta’, the thirteenth-century meaning of which can be given as ‘dignified’–or ‘self-possessed’. Instead he translates ‘gentile’ twice (and ‘gentle’ is questionable at best as a translation for that word). Neither Mr Mortimer nor Mr Howard ask themselves, apparently, why Dante says in the next lines of ‘Tanto gentile’ that people’s tongues tremble and their eyes don’t dare to look at her as Beatrice approaches. Would that be a normal reaction to someone who is merely ‘gentle and noble’, or was everyone in Florence prone to seizures? Rather, self-possession and openness certainly can be disconcerting, precisely because they are qualities of someone who is totally, vibrantly alive. This fits Dante’s view of Beatrice very well, despite the ‘seven centuries of reverence’ that Mr Elgar rightly points out throws a wet blanket over contemporary readings of the ‘Vita Nova’.

Andrew Frisardi Castiglione in Teverina, Italy

Some painful reading

Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Beata Beatrix, ca 1864-70.Here is the look of a great lady on the verge of death. Here is also the look of something else: What it feels like to read a bad book review.

I love the grim, gray pages of the Times Literary Supplement -- make that grim, grey pages -- even though the reading can get pretty tough at times, especially when you stumble on a bad review. They're not exactly hatchet jobs, but they seem just as pointless.

I was disappointed -- and a bit dismayed -- by a recent TLS piece on two translations of Dante's Vita Nova by a fellow who hasn't finished his doctorate yet.

It didn't bother me that he didn't care for the version by a guy I've worked with before -- Andrew Frisardi -- but it's all the high-minded nonsense in his criticism that's hard to take. It's the I-know-Dante-better-than-Dante-himself tone that all graduate Lit students suffer from (speaking from experience here).

"One wonders," the review says about a modern euphemism Frisardi uses, "whether the quest for modernity extends to political correctness. How else to explain the female subject of 'acts cool' when the Italian has a genderless (etymologically masculine) 'colui'?"

This graf is so full of posturing that I'm not going to waste space on an explanation.

A few lines later, there's a nice backhanded compliment: "Where Frisardi's edition excels is in its use of current scholarship. With over 200 pages of notes... it is surely intended for students, though echoing their speech in the lyric is a questionable strategy."

"it is surely intended..." Good grief.  That sounds like the assessment of someone who never steps outside or takes a break from the books. Or hasn't read David R. Slavitt. Or Lowell's imitations.

I'm adding this to my folder of bad examples of book reviews -- right alongside a ridiculously negative review (also in the TLS) of Arthur Phillips' novel The Tragedy of Arthur by an Elizabethan scholar who didn't think Phillips' Shakespearean verse was Shakespearean enough.

If you're ever the subject of such a review, my friends, please take heart. Even though the printed page gives validity to these pieces, try to work through your feelings and just remember that your most important critic should be you (etymologically neutral).

How do you blurb this?

QuestionMarkWoman1922I don't envy the book publicist who's trying to pull blurbs from the "Books of the Year" list in the latest edition of the Times Literary Supplement. There are plenty of raves among the 47 writers and critics listed there -- one of them, in fact, is my favorite Tolkien critic, Tom Shippey, on Nancy Brown's "Song of the Vikings" (what a great early Christmas present for her!) -- but there are also plenty of tricky, backhanded ones. Here are a few of my favorite, slightly unfriendly comments about books from the list of 47 critics, along with my suggestions to that fictional publicist who's struggling to find something blurb-worthy for promotion.

**

Keith Miller writes, "Jonathan Meades writes with his mouth full, so to speak, and he looms out of the TV like a bailiff; but I loved his Museum Without Walls (Unbound)..."

Verdict: Easy. Cut the first half about his mouth being full! Use the second half about loving this book!

**

Jonathan Benthall writes, "Less suitable as a Christmas present is Disquieting Gifts: Humanitarianism in New Delhi (Stanford University Press) by the American social anthrolopologist Erica Bornstein."

Verdict: No idea. Skip it. Unblurbable. Would you want to pick up a book that announces, on its cover, "less suitable as a Christmas present"?

**

Helen Simpson writes,  in reference to the performance of a play, "Caryl Churchill's Love and Information (Nick Hern) at the Royal Court was a brilliant scattershot fusillade of fifty-plus fragmentary scenes which whistled past at such speed that I had to read the play as well as see it..."

Verdict: It must have been exhilarating to watch this play. That's the sense I get. But that word "scattershot" sounds disorganized and messy. That can be a good thing in a work of art, and thank goodness there's the word "brilliant" to rescue it. I don't know: I'd let the publicist flip a coin on whether to use that quote or not.

**

Hilary Mantel writes, "[Edna O'Brien's] Country Girl is not a great book or even a good one, but it has exerted this year a loathly grip on me."

Verdict: Only a mighty Man Booker winner can dole out this kind of backhanded compliment. How do you blurb this? You can't. It is utterly, completely blurb-proof. And scathingly funny, too. My favorite out of all of them.