A bit of catching up

First of all, last night I went to Martfű (about half an hour away by train) to see a gala folk dance performance featuring the Tisza Táncegyüttes and several other groups. Two of my students and a former student were in it; they have been dancing for years, and you can see their love and expertise. They put so much zest, skill, and care into each gesture, each step, each syllable of the songs (they are often singing and dancing at the same time) that I couldn’t help getting caught up in the joy. The performers (in different groups) ranged from about 5 to 50. With the dancers in their late teens, you could see their work and talent taking distinctive form. They know how to work together, but each has a particular personality that comes out through the dances.

The week has been a bit of a whirlwind. Monday was the Shakespeare festival, a rousing success. That evening, my cats escaped through the window (the screen popped open and rolled upward while I had fallen asleep at my desk and actually fallen from the chair). I retrieved Sziszi right away but couldn’t manage to get Dominó, although I spotted him many times that night. The next day was my birthday, and while I sat outside early in the morning and late at night, I didn’t see him at all. On Wednesday night, my neighbor and I saw him, but he wouldn’t let me come close. On Thursday I went out with his favorite treat, chicken ham, and he came out from under a car to me and cuddled against me when I picked him up. He seemed delighted to be back home; he rolled over and over.

On Wednesday, for the professional development week, I gave a demo lesson (observed by two colleagues) in which my students and I read and discussed Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “The Fish.” My colleagues were duly impressed by my students’ ability to understand and talk about this complex poem in such a short time. We began by looking at the first and last lines (“I caught a tremendous fish”; “And I let the fish go.”). I told them, “So our goal is to figure out how the poem goes from here to there.” We considered the vocabulary closely, looking not only at the meanings of the words but at their role in the poem. At the end, I asked my students to connect the poem, in any way they saw fit, with Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo” (which they had already read); not only did they have a lot to say (a student pointed out that Rilke’s “You must change your life” actually happens—the changed life, that is—in Bishop’s poem), but just when I thought we had brought an end to the discussion, a student had more to say: she pointed out how, in Rilke’s poem, the speaker perceives the beauty of the torso right away, whereas in “The Fish,” it’s a gradual perception that ultimately becomes so overwhelming that the speaker has no regrets when she lets the fish go.

All week I was working on an exciting translation project that I finished today. It will be released soon, and I will say more about it then.

Speaking of translations, my translation of Sándor Jászberényi’s story “Nyugati történet” (“A Western Tale”) was published yesterday in the Spring 2023 issue of BODY. That’s the first of my Jászberényi translations to be published, as far as I know. In 2021 I translated his story collection A varjúkirály (King of the Crows); this is one of the stories. The translated book will find a publisher before long, I think.

I will leave off with some photos taken in the past few weeks.

Posted by Diana Senechal on April 30, 2023

https://dianasenechal.wordpress.com/2023/04/30/a-bit-of-catching-up/