Theme/Topic: Restrictions on women and their identity

• A woman is considered to only be a mother, daughter, sister, wife, or any other second category females.

• I saw a woman on the train wear a bakerboy cap which is traditionally a masculine thing to wear but she pulled it off really nicely.

• This morning I was running late for class and didn’t have time to make breakfast and my mom was sick but I didn’t ask my dad because that’s my mom’s “job.”

• In our culture, women are referred to by their husband’s last name—stripped from their own.  

• All we ever want is to be noticed, heard, understood, and appreciated.

– Sheik Floradewan

In the scene where Felix first sees Robin unconscious, he is enchanted by her beauty — so much that the author, Djuna Barnes, describes his temptations towards Robin as being cannibalistic by asserting “we feel that we could eat her, she who is eaten death returning, for only then do we put our face close to the blood on the lips of our forefathers” (41). Felix is essentially objectifying Robin to something that is “eaten” and strips her from her individuality. In the next paragraph Barnes writes: “something of this emotion came over Felix, but being racially incapable of abandon, he felt that he was looking upon a figurehead in a museum.” This sentence brings up two important themes, one of sexuality and one of race. Not only is Felix objectifying Robin here as “a figurehead in a museum,” but he is described as being “racially incapable of abandon.” This passage is difficult for me to understand because I am confused as to why he would be racially incapable of abandon? While he is an orphan, does he feel racially segregated from society as Jew? I tried to make sense of this passage by looking at it as a whole rather than focusing on the race aspect of it. As a whole, the passage continues to emphasize on Felix’s sexual desire for Robin. I tried to connect this to his “racial incapability” which could be interpreted as him being unable to express himself towards her because he is somewhat of an outsider. 

– Sheik Floradewan

A translation is the process of converting the meaning of words in one language to another. Andrew Zawacki, however, expressed the theme of translation as not being “word for word” because a word’s meaning in one language can never be fully understood in another as its meaning gets lost in translation. In English, everything is watered down. Zawacki diluted certain words when translating from French to English but that did not change the meaning of the poem. If the reader is confused, it is for the right reason. For example, translating a rhyming poem in French cannot be translated into a rhyming poem in English. As Zawacki put it, some words just sound better in French solely because it is in French. However, English has more options vocabulary wise but when referring to pronouns such as “you,” it is not gender specific and remains ambiguous as to whether the “you” is male or female. This may seem to be a limitation for a translator but for Zawacki, translations allows him to say what he cannot say. He essentially translates a text by capturing the meaning of it through different sounds and accents that keeps the lyrical style of the French poems. While words are not universal, the feelings they reciprocate are and Zawacki does a good job in getting the essence of the poem by allowing the audience to understand the meaning of it through the emotions he had when reading it. The first poem he read, Doldrums, was an angry poem which he was able to translate by putting his own emotions into it. Such ways of translating  gives meaning to poems rather than “word for word” translations. 

– Sheik Floradewan

(While I had emailed this to you on the day it was due, I am posting it here now since I didn’t know how to before, sorry about that.)

In Basho’s travel notebook, he stylistically writes in both prose and poetry. His use of prose serves to express his journey in terms of observations as the language is more straightforward while his use of poetry expresses feelings that are more indirect. By intertwining prose writing with poetry, Basho is able to depict what he sees on his journey and how he feels about it. The haiku serves to describe his emotional state. For example when the season is changing along with the beauty of the place he resides, Basho writes in prose: “Not passing any place without attending to its beauty, from time to time he wrote some moving poems. And now, facing departure…” then in poetry: “scribbled on,/ now the fan is torn up:/ reluctant parting” (148). These lineated verses come after his description which illustrate how it feels to disregard the fan used in the summer and adjust to the cool weather of early autumn. Basho purposefully chooses to write in poetry when describing this feeling because it would not have the same meaning to it if it were written in prose. Throughout the text, Basho makes the stylistic choice to write in prose and in poetry to emphasize that when he writes in prose, we as the reader understand only what he directly says. Whereas in poetry we can give our own meaning to it. Essentially the reader is able to see through Basho’s eyes in prose and then incorporate our own vision to Basho’s experience with nature.