Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Daisy Bates
My professor who does work in Australian Aboriginal land rights has gotten really excited about the project. We are going to do another sit down after the break where she claims she will give me anything biographical that I might need. I
Sunday, December 17, 2006
meeting
so sorry i was not at the meeting. i honestly just woke up for the day feeling extemely ill. progress is going well, i have selected a few quotes for at least three of the women (mead, angelou, kyi) and will write my explanations for both after teh 18th, my last final
Friday, December 15, 2006
Progress
Hi Everyone,
I started doing my research on Oprah Winfrey and there are many quotes to choose from but I'm concentrating on reading about her life and career before I start thinking about quotes. I'm currently reading "The African-American Century: How Black Americans have shaped our Country", "The Black 100" A Ranking of the most influential Afr-Americans" and "Oprah Winfrey speaks: Insight from the world's most influential voice".
See you all soon,
Michelle
I started doing my research on Oprah Winfrey and there are many quotes to choose from but I'm concentrating on reading about her life and career before I start thinking about quotes. I'm currently reading "The African-American Century: How Black Americans have shaped our Country", "The Black 100" A Ranking of the most influential Afr-Americans" and "Oprah Winfrey speaks: Insight from the world's most influential voice".
See you all soon,
Michelle
Monday, December 11, 2006
progress
I am very excited to work on gathering research for the journalist Amy Goodman, co-founder of the radio show "Democracy Now" ("probably the most significant progressive news institution that has come around in some time" ). I have not exactly worked up a storm of research as of yet, but this winter break should be pretty relaxing and I should have plenty of time to work on gathering that perfect quote.
Given that WBAI is located right on Wall Street, I am trying to set up a time to interview Amy Goodman. I have explored the official website of Democracy Now and WBAI and was unable to find Amy Goodman's e-mail listed, but was able to obtain more general emails and contacts. I will go about the process of setting up an interview time for sometime during break. Recently I borrowed a book that she co-authored, The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them, from the library. She also writes a weekly column called "Breaking the Sound Barrier" which I plan to sift through for quotes.
Right now, I think that the quote I find that embodies her life and work will probably involve such issues as media distortion and the role or calling of the journalist--something along the lines of "Going to where the silence is. That is the responsibility of a journalist: giving a voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken, and beaten down by the powerful. " I am still in the process of acquiring research and hopefully setting up an interview to speak with her personally, to get more a sense of who she is and what she is fighting for. I am also listening to the radio archives of her radio show.
A meeting on Sunday would be feasible for me, but I would not be able to stay for longer than about an 1/2-1 hr--due. of course, to finals.
--Veronica
Given that WBAI is located right on Wall Street, I am trying to set up a time to interview Amy Goodman. I have explored the official website of Democracy Now and WBAI and was unable to find Amy Goodman's e-mail listed, but was able to obtain more general emails and contacts. I will go about the process of setting up an interview time for sometime during break. Recently I borrowed a book that she co-authored, The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them, from the library. She also writes a weekly column called "Breaking the Sound Barrier" which I plan to sift through for quotes.
Right now, I think that the quote I find that embodies her life and work will probably involve such issues as media distortion and the role or calling of the journalist--something along the lines of "Going to where the silence is. That is the responsibility of a journalist: giving a voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken, and beaten down by the powerful. " I am still in the process of acquiring research and hopefully setting up an interview to speak with her personally, to get more a sense of who she is and what she is fighting for. I am also listening to the radio archives of her radio show.
A meeting on Sunday would be feasible for me, but I would not be able to stay for longer than about an 1/2-1 hr--due. of course, to finals.
--Veronica
progress
I am still doing a lot of work for the project, just haven't had time to sit down and list it all given finals. For San Suu Kyi I have 3 quotes that stand out for me:
"Free men are the oppressed who go on trying"
"The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit"
"It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights. There has to be a united determination to persever in the struggle; to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths; to resist the corrupting influences of desire, ill will, ignorance and fear."
I plan on writing an actual report on why I have chosen these quotes out of others after finals (the 18th) for many of the women.
I have great Margaret Mead stuff, and am currently reading "Growing Up in New Guinea" which is insightful in terms of Mead as an individual and woman, and also a revered anthropologist.
the Sunday meeting works for me
"Free men are the oppressed who go on trying"
"The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit"
"It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights. There has to be a united determination to persever in the struggle; to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths; to resist the corrupting influences of desire, ill will, ignorance and fear."
I plan on writing an actual report on why I have chosen these quotes out of others after finals (the 18th) for many of the women.
I have great Margaret Mead stuff, and am currently reading "Growing Up in New Guinea" which is insightful in terms of Mead as an individual and woman, and also a revered anthropologist.
the Sunday meeting works for me
Notice of our Next Meeting
Christiane Amanpour for MaryAlice
A welcomed Winter break is approaching fast for all of us!
I suggest that we meet this coming Sunday, December 17th at 2 pm at Columbia just like the last time. That day, I will have to be on the Upper West Side by 4 pm and I am sure that it will be very convenient for all of you too. If everyone is available, remember that someone will have to sign me in.
On the agenda: review of schedules and progress report discussion.
Hope you can all make it. Looking forward to seeing you all.
Mireille
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Colette - Response
Natalie:
Research combined with a keen intuition led you to select two compelling quotes.
In part because it resonates deeply with me but also based on my own reading of Colette’s novels and about her life and work, I am partial to the first one ( as I think you may be too). More importantly, as a defining quote, it could satisfy our search criteria for the book.The second quote is a glorious délire on the act of writing and highlights Colette’s poetic and singular writing style as you so justly described. Her relationship to the word would be worth noting here. She was passionate about words, they held a real fascination for her from their shape and their sound to all the interpretation possibilities they offered. She had a unique gift of infusing life into words in a way that appealed to all the senses.
Considering the arduous task of interpreting her words in a foreign language, your efforts at translating those passages are commendable. Really!
Your interest in the writing process and the themes of rebirth and becoming in Colette’s oeuvre guided your selection and that is clearly established.
From here, you need to be able to justify your choices. Either one of those quotes might be the right choice but why? How do they define Colette, the woman, the novelist, the mime, the columnist, drama critic, etc…? She was born the last quarter of the 19th century and traversed two world wars. Think about the status of women at the turn of 20th century Europe. Consider the times she lived in and what made her accomplishments remarkable. These were extraordinary times. She led a fascinating life but what made it so and how? What did she contribute to her time? Placing Colette in a rightful context will help you justify your selection and help us better understand and appreciate your choices. We need to know who Colette is and, more importantly, we need to have a real feel for who she was when reading your final quote presentation.
If you keep in mind the mission of the project: "To instruct, inspire and increase awareness of women’s essential contribution to our societies past and present " it should help you.
Great work so far Natalie. Bon courage pour la suite!
Mireille
Friday, December 01, 2006
Colette
Hi everyone! I just wanted to send an update concerning my research on Colette. I have found a number of good quotes from a variety of sources, including Colette’s numerous literary works and an interview she gave in 1954. Here are two that I find particularly promising for the book – please feel free to send any and all comments!
1. L’heure de la fin des découvertes ne sonne jamais. Le monde m’est nouveau à mon réveil chaque matin et je ne cesserai d’éclore que pour cesser de vivre » (Colette en 1954 à propos du Blé en herbe)
My preliminary translation :
“The final hour of discovery never sounds. The world is new to me every morning when I wake up, and I will only cease to be born when I cease to live”
Note on the translation: “éclore”, translated here as “to be born”, also evokes the natural world in French, specifically the “birth” of plants and animals. Eclore can mean “to hatch” or “to flower”. In the case of an idea, it means “to take form.” I’m worried that the English translation of “born,” while correct, misses the “blossoming” quality underlined in the original. If anyone has any ideas on how to improve this, please let me know!
I chose this quote because the themes of continual rebirth and becoming are central to Colette’s life and work. Colette was a woman who was constantly re-inventing herself. She had several careers, (writer, performing artist, and later, beauty-product designer), was married and divorced 3 times, had numerous love affairs, and in general treated both existence and art as a series of great experiments. “Rebirth” also plays an important role in the experiences of Colette’s fictional characters. For example, in her novel La Vagabonde (The Vagabond), the heroine is named “Renée Néré” which is an anagram in French for the adjective form of the verb “renaître”, meaning to be reborn. The novel chronicles the experience of a woman “reborn” after her divorce from her husband as she seeks to re-define and re-construct her own identity. For Renée, writing is central to this quest. Needless to say, Colette’s La Vagabonde has a strong autobiographical element, and Colette often uses Renée as a vehicle to communicate her own thoughts about life, love and womanhood to the reader. In what is perhaps the most metatextual passage of the work, the protagonist declares her thoughts on writing:
2. Ecrire ! Pouvoir écrire ! cela signifie la longue rêverie devant la feuille blanche, le griffonnage inconscient, les jeux de la plume qui tourne en rond autour d’une tache d’encre, qui mordille le mot imparfait, le griffe, le hérisse de fléchettes, l’orne d’antennes, de pattes, jusqu’à ce qu’il perde sa figure lisible de mot, mué en insecte fantastique, envolé en papillon-fée…
Ecrire…C’est regard accroché, hypnotisé par le reflet de la fenêtre dans l’encrier d’argent, la fièvre divine qui montre aux joues, au front, tandis qu’une bienheureuse mort glace sur le papier la main qui écrit. Cela veut dire aussi l’oubli de l’heure, la paresse au creux du divin, la débauche d’invention d’où l’on sort courbatu, abêti, mais déjà récompensé, et porteur de trésors qu’on décharge lentement sur la feuille vierge, dans le petit cirque de lumière qui s’abrite sous la lampe…
Ecrire ! plaisir et souffrance d’oisifs ! Ecrire ! … J’éprouve bien, de loin en loin, le besoin, vif comme la soif en été, de noter de peindre… Je prends encore la plume, pour commencer le jeu périlleux et décevant pour saisir et fixer, sous la pointe double et ployante, le chatoyant, le fugace, le passionnant adjectif… Ce n’est qu’une courte crise, la démangeaison d’une cicatrice ! …
Here is my preliminary translation (to be revised!) of this passage:
To write! To be able to write! It’s the long reverie before the white page, the unconscious scribble, the games of the quill that turn in a circle around a stain of ink, that nibble at the imperfect word, claw it, [spike][1]it with darts, adorn it with antennas, with paws, until it looses its figure as a word, transformed into an fantastical insect, a fairy butterfly flying away…
To write…it’s the look fixated, hypnotized by the reflection of the window in the [inkpot of money], the divine fever that climbs to the cheeks, to the forehead, while the hand that writes [glazes/freezes] a blessed death onto the paper. It’s also the forgetting of the hour, laziness in the hollow of the divine, debauchery of invention wherefrom one leaves aching all over, addled, but already rewarded, and carrying treasures that one discharges slowly on the virgin page, in a little circus of light that takes shelter under the lamp…
To write! To pour out with rage all the sincerity of the self onto the alluring paper, so quickly, so quickly that sometimes the hand fights and grumbles, overworked by the impatient god that guides it…and to find again, the next day, in the place of the gold branch, miraculously born in a flamboyant hour, a dry branch, an aborted flower…
To write! Pleasure and suffering of idlers! To write!... I feel strongly, more and more, the need, sharp like thirst in summer, to note, to paint… I take the quill once more, to begin the perilous and disappointing game, to grasp and to fix, under the double and sagging peak, the shimmering, the fleeting, the fascinating adjective…this is but a short crisis, the itching sensation of a scar!...
Naturally, I chose this quote because it deals explicitly with writing. The passage illuminates Colette’s view of the writing process: it’s both a joyous and an agonizing activity, full of creative possibility but also of failure. Moreover, the excerpt is a great example of Colette’s singular writing style. We are confronted here with highly original imagery and unconventional pairing of words. The whole passage radiates energy and urgency, and it succeeds in evoking a wide range of emotions, often contradictory: furor desperation, rapture, exaltation. This is Colette at her best.
Natalie
1. L’heure de la fin des découvertes ne sonne jamais. Le monde m’est nouveau à mon réveil chaque matin et je ne cesserai d’éclore que pour cesser de vivre » (Colette en 1954 à propos du Blé en herbe)
My preliminary translation :
“The final hour of discovery never sounds. The world is new to me every morning when I wake up, and I will only cease to be born when I cease to live”
Note on the translation: “éclore”, translated here as “to be born”, also evokes the natural world in French, specifically the “birth” of plants and animals. Eclore can mean “to hatch” or “to flower”. In the case of an idea, it means “to take form.” I’m worried that the English translation of “born,” while correct, misses the “blossoming” quality underlined in the original. If anyone has any ideas on how to improve this, please let me know!
I chose this quote because the themes of continual rebirth and becoming are central to Colette’s life and work. Colette was a woman who was constantly re-inventing herself. She had several careers, (writer, performing artist, and later, beauty-product designer), was married and divorced 3 times, had numerous love affairs, and in general treated both existence and art as a series of great experiments. “Rebirth” also plays an important role in the experiences of Colette’s fictional characters. For example, in her novel La Vagabonde (The Vagabond), the heroine is named “Renée Néré” which is an anagram in French for the adjective form of the verb “renaître”, meaning to be reborn. The novel chronicles the experience of a woman “reborn” after her divorce from her husband as she seeks to re-define and re-construct her own identity. For Renée, writing is central to this quest. Needless to say, Colette’s La Vagabonde has a strong autobiographical element, and Colette often uses Renée as a vehicle to communicate her own thoughts about life, love and womanhood to the reader. In what is perhaps the most metatextual passage of the work, the protagonist declares her thoughts on writing:
2. Ecrire ! Pouvoir écrire ! cela signifie la longue rêverie devant la feuille blanche, le griffonnage inconscient, les jeux de la plume qui tourne en rond autour d’une tache d’encre, qui mordille le mot imparfait, le griffe, le hérisse de fléchettes, l’orne d’antennes, de pattes, jusqu’à ce qu’il perde sa figure lisible de mot, mué en insecte fantastique, envolé en papillon-fée…
Ecrire…C’est regard accroché, hypnotisé par le reflet de la fenêtre dans l’encrier d’argent, la fièvre divine qui montre aux joues, au front, tandis qu’une bienheureuse mort glace sur le papier la main qui écrit. Cela veut dire aussi l’oubli de l’heure, la paresse au creux du divin, la débauche d’invention d’où l’on sort courbatu, abêti, mais déjà récompensé, et porteur de trésors qu’on décharge lentement sur la feuille vierge, dans le petit cirque de lumière qui s’abrite sous la lampe…
Ecrire ! plaisir et souffrance d’oisifs ! Ecrire ! … J’éprouve bien, de loin en loin, le besoin, vif comme la soif en été, de noter de peindre… Je prends encore la plume, pour commencer le jeu périlleux et décevant pour saisir et fixer, sous la pointe double et ployante, le chatoyant, le fugace, le passionnant adjectif… Ce n’est qu’une courte crise, la démangeaison d’une cicatrice ! …
Here is my preliminary translation (to be revised!) of this passage:
To write! To be able to write! It’s the long reverie before the white page, the unconscious scribble, the games of the quill that turn in a circle around a stain of ink, that nibble at the imperfect word, claw it, [spike][1]it with darts, adorn it with antennas, with paws, until it looses its figure as a word, transformed into an fantastical insect, a fairy butterfly flying away…
To write…it’s the look fixated, hypnotized by the reflection of the window in the [inkpot of money], the divine fever that climbs to the cheeks, to the forehead, while the hand that writes [glazes/freezes] a blessed death onto the paper. It’s also the forgetting of the hour, laziness in the hollow of the divine, debauchery of invention wherefrom one leaves aching all over, addled, but already rewarded, and carrying treasures that one discharges slowly on the virgin page, in a little circus of light that takes shelter under the lamp…
To write! To pour out with rage all the sincerity of the self onto the alluring paper, so quickly, so quickly that sometimes the hand fights and grumbles, overworked by the impatient god that guides it…and to find again, the next day, in the place of the gold branch, miraculously born in a flamboyant hour, a dry branch, an aborted flower…
To write! Pleasure and suffering of idlers! To write!... I feel strongly, more and more, the need, sharp like thirst in summer, to note, to paint… I take the quill once more, to begin the perilous and disappointing game, to grasp and to fix, under the double and sagging peak, the shimmering, the fleeting, the fascinating adjective…this is but a short crisis, the itching sensation of a scar!...
Naturally, I chose this quote because it deals explicitly with writing. The passage illuminates Colette’s view of the writing process: it’s both a joyous and an agonizing activity, full of creative possibility but also of failure. Moreover, the excerpt is a great example of Colette’s singular writing style. We are confronted here with highly original imagery and unconventional pairing of words. The whole passage radiates energy and urgency, and it succeeds in evoking a wide range of emotions, often contradictory: furor desperation, rapture, exaltation. This is Colette at her best.
Natalie
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)