Don Juan in Hell

Reading from one entry to the next in the Wikipedia, as one does, I land on Don Juan and am intrigued by the summary of the legend:

Don Juan either raped or seduced a young woman of noble family, and killed her father. Later, he encountered a statue of her father in a cemetery and impiously invited it home to dine with him, an invitation the statue gladly accepted. The ghost of the father arrived for dinner, as the harbinger of Don Juan's death. The statue asked to shake Don Juan's hand, and when he extended his arm, the statue dragged him away to Hell.

So far, so good: this the story as we know it. However, in the Wikipedia's version, the legend has a second act:

In Hell, the Devil meets Don Juan. The Devil tells him that everyone in Hell is cast in a role, and then presents him with a Jester's suit, telling him, "You'll make an excellent fool." Don Juan is insulted by this, protesting that no other man was his equal, "I am the man who made a thousand conquests!" Intrigued by that claim, the Devil tells him that if he can correctly name one conquest, he would not have to wear the suit. Thus began the parade of women. Not one could Don Juan name correctly. Finally, a woman stands before him, tears on her face. "Yes," the Devil says, "this is the one woman who truly loved you". Helpless, Don Juan looks into her eyes, then turns to the Devil and says, "Give me the suit".

Wonderful. (Assuming, of course, as I do, that he means "Yes, you're right, I concede that I was a fool.")

One of the things I like best about Mozart's (which actually means Lorenzo da Ponte's) Don Giovanni is that he remains true to himself and the way he has lived, even in the moment of his death. He knows perfectly well that the ghost of the Commendatore has come to end his life, and that to refuse to repent consigns him to Hell, and goes consciously, willingly, unrepentantly to his doom:

Statue of the Commendatore: To supper you invited me, you know a host's obligation. So answer: will you in turn come and sup with me?
Leporello: For God's sake, no! He is not free, excuse him.
Giovanni: Never will I be accused of cowardice.
Commendatore: Make your decision.
Giovanni: I am decided.
Commendatore: You'll come?
Leporello: Tell him "no"!
Giovanni: My heart is firm within me, I know no fear. I'll come.

I have always found the Christian tradition of a deathbed repentance washing away all sins to be repugnant: One may be the worst bastard on earth, breaking commandments and rules and hearts, spreading misery and despair in all directions—but just whisper a "yes" to the priest and shed a tear or two and your soul goes to Heaven? Bah. What an insult, what a slap in the face to the rest of us, to the miserable victims of this bastard, that he should be permitted to repent. Hooray for Giovanni, a man with the courage of his convictions.

Fifteen down, fifteen to go.

Miscellany, Saturday edition

Listening to Don Giovanni, the soundtrack to the Joseph Losey film. This is one of my many favourite operas, possibly my most favouritest after Wagner. I've heard it many dozens of times and seen it performed live twice, and it never gets stale. The Don is such a wonderful character (well: an extremely nasty, vicious bastard, but you know what I mean); Leporello is the perfect obsequious servant, a worm who dreams of turning; and oh, that final scene with the statue!

Many years ago, I saw a remarkable production in which the Don and Leporello were sung by a pair of identical twins, Herbert and Eugene Perry. They played their roles as the opposite of a split personality: One soul in two bodies. I found it a fascinating, revelatory production (though many disagreed), one of the few cleverclogs-director-productions of any opera which transcended the director's ego to achieve something truly new.

Leporello and the Don are (in any production of the opera) entwined in a relationship of almost incestuous closeness, picking the lice from each other's souls (as Vladimir would have it). Like some married couples, they would be glad to be rid of each other but neither wishes to take the first step. Leporello claims to be appalled by the Don's cruel immorality, but enjoys a comfortable life with him; Giovanni is irritated by Leporello's moralizing, but knows he would never find another servant so willing. They have come to need each other.

Finished translating the second item, which was a set of Powerpoint slides about the institution where Princess is shortly to exhibit some new works, for the annual meeting of its directors and sponsors. Should anyone ever ask you to translate Powerpoint slides, learn from my experience: It is nearly impossible to do this on your own, unless the Powerpointer is the kind of idiot who writes out his entire speech line-for-line onto zig hundred slides. Powerpoint which has been done properly, i.e. as a non-distracting adjunct to a speech, is utterly meaningless on its own! Of roughly forty bullet points, some of which were single words, I guessed three-quarters wrongly because I'd misunderstood the context.

I am now wondering how to charge for this part of the job. Normally translation is charged per word, but done by the sentence or even paragraph (i.e. in semantic units); one seldom has to look up a word in the original language because the context usually makes its meaning clear. In Powerpoint, nobody can hear you scream there is no context—it's given by the speech that you (translator) can't hear. I think I shall treat each bullet point as a sentence, and take the average sentence length from the first document to arrive at a working length and thus at the price.

A new meme is making the rounds. Courtesy of the Little Professor, I give you the Library Meme. It's a very simple one, just a single question: which books do you presently have out on loan from the library?

I've borrowed four books:

• Elizabeth George, Well schooled in murder
• Martha Grimes, Inspektor Jury sucht den Kennington Smaragd
• Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Oskar und die Dame in Rosa
• Robert Schneider, Schlafes Bruder

and reserved another:

• Alberto Moravia, Die Verachtung

There, wasn't that just fascinating? Tagged you, you're it.