{"id":78297,"date":"2014-10-21T15:11:41","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T19:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=78297"},"modified":"2014-10-21T16:21:14","modified_gmt":"2014-10-21T20:21:14","slug":"counterpunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/21\/counterpunch\/","title":{"rendered":"Counterpunch"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a sentence by Robert Walser.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Plantin_letterpress\"<\/a>

Plantin letterpress type. Photo via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

It is worth remembering that there once was a time when every letter, number, and punctuation mark printed on paper started life as a sculpture. Someone had to make the letterforms by hand, in three dimensions; the individual characters could all look alike because they were all molten metal poured into the same mold (hence: font<\/em>), but someone had to make the molds. The first time this hit home for me was when I thought about changing the type size in letterpress days: rather than pressing CTRL<\/small>+> or CTRL<\/small>+<, the whole font\u2014every letter, capital and lowercase and italic and roman, every number and symbol\u2014would have to be recarved, by hand, from scratch. Redesigned, too, since different proportions work better at different sizes. Tiny furniture\u2019s got nothing on typefaces.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re sculptures, not drawings, because the angle and depth of the sides affect the look of the printed letter. These can be adequately controlled along the outline of a letter, but for the inner lines and negative spaces\u2014the triangle in an A<\/em>, the near-rectangles in a serifed E<\/em>\u2014it\u2019s hard to gouge out the cavities precisely enough. So a D<\/em>, for instance, would start out as a rod of steel whose tip is carved into a semicircle: a counterpunch, tempered to be harder than the steel of the punch. Pounding this into the flat end of another rod makes a semicircle-shaped hole. Carving around the hole makes a raised D<\/em>, or rather a raised \u15e1<\/em>. Slamming that rod into another block of metal (softer than the steel, usually copper) makes a \u15e1<\/em>-shaped hole, the matrix. Pouring molten metal into that and letting it cool produces the piece of type. Then the letters are set into a stick, in reverse order; clamped together; and ink is rolled onto the surface before it is flipped again onto a sheet of paper, leaving a D<\/em>-shaped black mark.<\/p>\n

By my count, that\u2019s five turnarounds: counterpunch, punch, matrix, piece of type, printed character. There\u2019s a strange reversal in time, too, since every other kind of counterpunch (in boxing, in debate) reacts to the punch, while here it pre-exists the punch. I\u2019ve never gotten tired of replaying the transformations in my mind\u2014positive, negative, positive, negative, mirrored, counting and recounting them, following the fate of a raised waning half-moon to the empty space in a printed D<\/em>. The dreamy dizziness felt like what art is. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve since found the same effect in a sentence I\u2019ve translated<\/a> by the Swiss writer Robert Walser<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Der weite See glich einem Kinde, das v\u00f6llig still ist, weil es schl\u00e4ft und tr\u00e4umt.<\/em><\/p>\n

The large lake resembled a child who is completely silent because asleep and dreaming.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

How can a large lake be like a child\u2014isn\u2019t smallness what defines a child? It turns out they are alike in their silence, even though neither form of life is generally known for being completely silent. The child is silent because asleep, which explains it. But the child is dreaming \u2026 and with that a universe opens up within the child, who is large after all, containing worlds wider than even the largest lake. The animate child, stilled, is brought back to life, an inaccessible inner life. I am happy for this child; I love this child, as much as Walser loves and makes me love his lake.<\/p>\n

The sentence comes in the middle of a series of such reversals, all helping to set us afloat in Walser\u2019s dreamworld:<\/p>\n

\n

The high mountain, drawn down by gentle forces, sank mildly with a wonderful gesture into the depths, where the smooth surface of the water gracefully reflected it. The large lake resembled a child who is completely silent because asleep and dreaming. The calm reigning everywhere all around was made yet stronger, and bigger, by the delicate rush of the rain; the silence, rustling noiselessly back and forth like an evening bird, experienced no lessening from the timorous light wind shyly wafting from the west.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sinking and rising, back and forth, big strong calmness, rustling silence. It may not matter what the opposites are\u2014the pattern itself is enough, a flipping of the counterpunch. Art has to open something up inside us, an inner sky<\/a> as Rilke calls it. It sets up two opposing poles, pulls them as far apart as possible, and maintains the tension or communication between them\u2014in the back and forth, the space between is where the feeling lives.<\/p>\n

Walser\u2019s German sentence has a harmonious balance and rhythm, with the three comma-separated parts separated, too, by pauses between unstressed syllables, until the strong finish. An optional, slightly archaic word form\u2014Kinde<\/em> instead of Kind<\/em>\u2014makes the pattern perfect. Here\u2019s how the syllables scan:<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0\u00a0 \u222a\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \/ \u222a \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \/\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u222a\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \/\u00a0 \u222a\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \/ \u222a<\/p>\n

Der weite See glich einem Kinde,<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u222a\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \/\u00a0 \u222a\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \/\u00a0\u00a0 \u222a<\/p>\n

das v\u00f6llig still ist,<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u222a\u00a0\u00a0 \u222a\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \/\u00a0 \u222a\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \/<\/p>\n

\u00a0weil es schl\u00e4ft und tr\u00e4umt.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I don\u2019t scan every sentence I translate; I\u2019d never scanned this one until the translation was done and I realized how much the sentence moved me. If I had done it beforehand, I could have matched the syllables in English\u2014\u201cThe spacious lake was like a child who is wholly silent while he sleeps and dreams\u201d\u2014but that wouldn\u2019t have been a better sentence in this case, especially since it forces a gender onto our sleeping mystery. My intuitive translation matched Walser\u2019s 4-2-2 stresses and had a rhythm of its own, with exactly matching patterns in the second half of rushed rise and quick falling off.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0 \u222a\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \/\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \/<\/p>\n

The large lake<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u222a\u00a0 \/ \u00a0\u00a0 \u222a\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u222a\u00a0\u00a0 \/<\/p>\n

resembled a child<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u222a \u00a0 \u00a0 \u222a\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u222a \u00a0 \/ \u00a0 \u222a\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \/ \u222a<\/p>\n

who is completely silent<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 \u222a\u00a0 \u222a\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u222a\u00a0 \/ \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u222a\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \/\u00a0 \u222a<\/p>\n

because asleep and dreaming.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If we had a grammar of prose rhythm, we would know more about the difference between Walser\u2019s dreams in German and in English, or maybe children\u2019s dreams in German and in English. The German is stately and regular, a march with a pause for each change in direction; the English starts stronger and fades gently and evenly away, like the splash and ripples of a stone tossed into a large lake. In either language, the words are asleep until we dream them.<\/p>\n

Damion Searls<\/a>, the <\/em>Daily\u2019s language columnist, is a translator from German, French, Norwegian, and Dutch.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a sentence by Robert Walser. It is worth remembering that there once was a time when every letter, number, and punctuation mark printed on paper started life as a sculpture. Someone had to make the letterforms by hand, in three dimensions; the individual characters could all look alike because they were all molten metal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":754,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[807],"tags":[493,687,3563,15725,2283,13111,530,15496],"class_list":["post-78297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-translation","tag-dreams","tag-language","tag-letterpress","tag-meter","tag-robert-walser","tag-sentences","tag-translation","tag-typesetting"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Sentence by Robert Walser<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Damion Searls on translating the Swiss writer.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/21\/counterpunch\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Counterpunch by Damion Searls\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"October 21, 2014 \u2013 On a sentence by Robert Walser. 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