Lost in Translation

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Apocryphal but entertaining: Allegedly a Paris (or Genoese?) opera company provided this synopsis of Carmen to its English-speaking patrons:

Act 1. Carmen is a cigar-makeress from a tabago factory who loves with Don José of the mounting guard. Carmen takes a flower from her corsets and lances it to Don José (Duet: ‘Talk me of my mother’). There is a noise inside the tabago factory and the revolting cigar-makeresses burst into the stage. Carmen is arrested and Don José is ordered to mounting guard her but Carmen subduces him and he lets her escape.

Act 2. The Tavern. Carmen, Frasquita, Mercedes, Zuniga, Morales. Carmen’s aria (‘The sistrums are tinkling’). Enter Escamillio, a balls-fighter. Enter two smuglers (Duet: ‘We have in mind a business’) but Carmen refuses to penetrate because Don José has liberated her from prison. He just now arrives (Aria: ‘Slop, here who comes!’) but hear are the bugles singing his retreat. Don José will leave and draws his sword. Called by Carmen shrieks the two smuglers interfere with her but Don José is bound to dessert, he will follow into them (final chorus: ‘Opening sky wandering life’).

Act 3. A roky landscape, the smuglers shelter. Carmen sees her death in cards and Don José makes a date with Carmen for the next balls fight.

Act 4, A place in Seville. Procession of balls-fighters, the roaring of the balls heard in the arena. Escamillio enters, (Aria and chorus: ‘Toreador, toreador, all hail the balls of a Toreador’). Enter Don José (Aria: ‘I do not threaten, I besooch you.’) but Carmen repels himwants to join with Escamillio now chaired by the crowd. Don José stabbs her (Aria: ‘Oh rupture, rupture, you may arrest me, I did kill der’) he sings ‘Oh my beautiful Carmen, my subductive Carmen …’

From what I can tell, the earliest date claimed for the opera performance is 1928, and this excerpt didn’t appear until 1966. No one anywhere makes any confident claim as to the writer.

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Pastiche

The Journal International de Médecine carried a startling article in 1987: “Mise en Évidence Expérimentale d’une Organisation Tomatotopique chez la Soprano,” or “Experimental Demonstration of the Tomatotopic Organization in the Soprano (Cantatrix sopranica L.).” In it, author Georges Perec notes that throwing tomatoes at sopranos seems to induce a “yelling reaction” and sets out to understand why:

Tomatoes (Tomato rungisia vulgaris) were thrown by an automatic tomatothrower (Wait & See, 1972) monitored by an all-purpose laboratory computer (DID/92/85/P/331) operated on-line. Repetitive throwing allowed up to 9 projections per sec, thus mimicking the physiological conditions encountered by Sopranoes and other Singers on stage (Tebaldi, 1953). … Control experiments were made with other projectiles, as apple cores, cabbage runts, hats, roses, pumpkins, bullets, and ketchup (Heinz, 1952).

The paper concludes:

It has been shown above that tomato throwing provokes, along with a few other motor, visual, vegetative and behavioral reactions, neuronal responses in 3 distinctive brain areas: the nucleus anterior reticular thalami, pars lateralis (NARTpl), the anterior portion of the tractus leguminosus (apTL) and the dorsal part of the so-called musical sulcus (scMS).

It ends with an incomprehensible diagram modeling the anatomical organization of the yelling reaction. No practical advice is offered the sopranos.

10/18/2024 UPDATE: It appears that Perec wrote the piece originally in 1974 while working as a scientific archivist in the laboratory of neuroscientist André Hugelin. It was Perec’s contribution to a special volume presented to neurophysiologist Marthe Bonvallet on her retirement. (Thanks, Frederic and Bruce.)

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Hard of Hearing

In 1979 Auberon Waugh was working as a columnist at Private Eye when his editor offered him a trip to Senegal to help celebrate the anniversary of the magazine’s sister publication. “All I would have to give in exchange was a short discourse in the French language on the subject of breast feeding.”

The assignment struck Waugh as strange but not unaccountable — he’d been writing a regular column in a medical magazine that had touched on that topic.

“So I composed a speech on this subject in French, with considerable labour, only to find when I landed in Dakar that the subject chosen was not breast-feeding but press freedom.” He’d misheard the editor.

“There was no way even to describe the misunderstanding, since la liberté de la Presse bears no resemblance to le nourrisson naturel des bébés.”

(From Waugh’s 1991 autobiography Will This Do?)

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A Tour of England

From reader Dave King:

A certain young lady of Prinknash
Was looking decidedly thinknash.
Her diet restriction
Had proved an addiction
And caused her to swiftly diminknash.

A hungry young student of Norwich
Went into his larder to forwich.
For breakfast he usually
Had bacon or muesli
But today he would have to have porwich.

An ethical diner at Alnwick
Was suddenly put in a palnwick
“This coffee you’ve made
Are you sure it’s Fair Trade?
And I must insist that it’s orgalnwick!”

A Science don, Gonville and Caius,
Kept body parts in his deep fraius.
He didn’t remember
And one dark November
He ate them with cabbage and paius.

A Frenchman now living at Barnoldswick
Was terribly partial to garnoldswick.
The smell of his breath
Drove one lady to death;
She fell from the ramparts at Harnoldswick.

A forceful young prisoner from Brougham
Was confined to a windowless rougham,
So, venting his feelings,
He bashed through the ceiling,
Dispelling the gathering glougham.

(Thanks, Dave.)

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Stops and Starts

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Henry James’ 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle is written in his famously tortured syntax:

It led, briefly, in the course of the October afternoon, to his closer meeting with May Bartram, whose face, a reminder, yet not quite a remembrance, as they sat much separated at a very long table, had begun merely by troubling him rather pleasantly.

James Thurber parodied this with “The Beast in the Dingle”:

He had brought himself so fully in the end, poor Grantham, to accept his old friend’s invitation to accompany her to an ‘afternoon’ at ‘Cornerbright’ that now, on the very porch of the so evident house, he could have, for his companion, in all surrender, a high, fine — there was no other word for it — twinkle.

Thurber originally called this “The Return of the Screw.” See Homage and A Prose Maze.

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Spotted

In a 1963 issue of Bokmakierie, a magazine for birdwatchers, Frank A. Goodliffe described a curiously familiar species he called Clericus polydenominata, the “dog-collared sombre blackbird”:

Identification: Similar to common laity but plumage and behaviour should serve to differentiate. Plumage black with narrow white collar — unbroken at throat. Feet black, of leathery appearance. Beak pink — often with blueish tint during winter months. When in groups are often seen with wings folded behind rump. … Habits: Usually found congregating with flocks of common laity, the females of which are frequently seen with plumage of vivid colours. Nesting: This usually occurs close to old buildings with spires. They are usually very friendly and may be seen around nesting sites of common laity at tea-time. … Call: The voice is distinctive, commencing ‘Brrrrr–rethren’ and continuing low and pleasant — often prolonged. Usually sings in congregations.

In a private booklet published four years later, M.A. Traylor suggested that the species belonged in the family of bishop birds.

(From Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature.)

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