The "you" and the "you"

greta · Post by **greta** » Sat Apr 02, 2005 3:29 pm

hehee the lecturer had a point somewhere but unfortunately i don't remember it

But it was a good lecture

Nazaree · Post by **Nazaree** » Sat Apr 02, 2005 3:40 pm

Nazaree - I don't speak Italian either, but I thought the Italian for I love you was 'ti amo'. Or am I getting confused with good old Latin amo, amas amat etc.?

Hi linmag--

The person who told me that "ti voglio bene" means "I love you" in Italian is a writer from Florence. There's also a rather famous Italian song--a pop tune--where the singer, a man, hollers "ti vooooooglio beeeene" as if this were the end of the world, so I imagine it does mean "I love you." "Ti voglio bene" translates not as "je veux bien" in French, but rather as "je te veux du bien"--I wish you well / I wish you good things--which has always struck me as odd. I mean, this is what love means and what love wants, of course, but it's not very sexy or passionate, is it?

On the topic of the untranslatability of the "you" in Slavic languages... Wow!! That's fascinating. Fascinating because, even in English, the "you" in Cohen's work is elusive. As you say, it shifts from God to Roshi, to woman, to friend, to the doubling of the narrator's voice into participant/observer. Yet isn't there a hierarchy in Cohen's work? Isn't God ultimately at the top of this hierarchy? My question: in that hierarchy, who is next "on top"--the speaker split into particpant/observer (as in the song "Dress Rehearsal Rag") or woman?

jurica · Post by **jurica** » Sat Apr 02, 2005 3:56 pm

i wouldn't say: 'God is on top of the hierarchy'.

it depends on the song.

it's interesting how he first wrote Halellujah with God 'on the top', but he later decided that it can work without God as a simple love song. from the way he said that i had the feeling that in this particular song - an unnamed woman is 'on the top of the hierarchy'!

anyway, it's mostly an Ovidie-like metamorphoses that his 'powerful figures' go through. they change one into another. that way it's more about himself than about God, woman or father - it's about intimate feeling of giving oneself completely to another person. at least that's the way i feel when i listen to Halelujah, Song of Isaac or If It Be Your Will...

and it' VERY hard to translate into a Slavic language (Tom Sakic and I are working on translations of all of his songs - an ambitious and dificult task).

Sandra · Post by **Sandra** » Sat Apr 02, 2005 4:05 pm

The "it" does not exist in spanish either. We have masculine and feminine for people, animals and things......

But there is a strange difficult word that is "lo" refering to neuter pronoun
like abstract ideas.....
lo bueno
lo hermoso....etc...

Nazaree · Post by **Nazaree** » Sat Apr 02, 2005 4:07 pm

I meant that God is on top when it comes to the whole of the work--when you look at the corpus as a whole.

Jurica and Tom S.: Do you happen to know Ivana Djordjevic? She's a translator from Serbo-Croatian to English and, although she doesn't translate Cohen, she's a great admirer. How about David Homel? Just wondering.

jurica · Post by **jurica** » Sat Apr 02, 2005 4:13 pm

i don't know either, but Tom may... he's more of a 'public relation guy' than I. he knows much more people in LC field.

tomsakic · Post by **tomsakic** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 11:00 am

Nazaree, first, welcome, I'm sorry you first came here in the midst of some peculiar "troll" fight... And thanks - it seems that I forgot teacher / Roshi in the counting of possible "you's"

I don't know her - she's not listed in the Croatian OPAC so she didn't translate anything into Croatian - as far I googled there's one woman of that name from Serbia, journalist from Novine Toronto, apparently serbian newspapers from Toronto, Canada.
David Homel is as far I know the Montreal writer, he got General-Governor award. I don't know about his connections to Cohen nor to this part of Europe. He's not translated in Croatia, but I saw his Serbian translation in bookstore, in pretty good Geopoetika edition - by strange coincidence, Geopoetika publishing house is edited by Vladislav Bajac, whom we can name as the exclusive translator of Cohen's poetry in former Yugoslavia - I have both his Leonard's books (Energy Of Slaves & Selected Poems) and few interviews. If you speak Serbian, he wrote great review of Dear Heather, on of the best, on site by Serbian newspaper Vreme. I am trying to contact him for a long time; because I'd try to ask him about permission that we publish his 80s interviews with Leonard on our site.

Nazaree · Post by **Nazaree** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 5:09 pm

Hi Tom--

Thanks for the welcome. The troll fight is quite peculiar, I must admit. As for David and Ivana, the world is so small that I thought you might know them. David wrote a novel about Serbian characters and dilemmas (The Speaking Cure, in English), in which one of his characters is based on Bajac and his love of Cohen. Ivana used to translate English lit. into Serbo-Croat but has since become a court translator for the Hague's tribunal on war crimes. Still, she is one of Cohen's great fans.

tomsakic · Post by **tomsakic** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 5:14 pm

Ahm ah - if you ever would be able to contact Bajac, just tell me...

Now I am in midst of some peculiar troll fight - and I never heard for trolls outside Tolkine / mythology before yesterday

Insanitor · Post by **Insanitor** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 4:07 am

Dear Tchoco

A belated thanks...

linda_lakeside · Post by **linda_lakeside** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 5:06 am

Hi Tom,

Now I am in midst of some peculiar troll fight - and I never heard for trolls outside Tolkine / mythology before yesterday

You are NOT in the middle of some troll fight. You stay right where you are, and fight for the right for more Leonard!!

Linda.